Getting Noticed

Many of you may remember Autodesk's Inventor ad campaign at SolidWorks World in New Orleans this February. The one where Autodesk splashed the number of Inventor users all across New Orleans. The CAD press and bloggers had a lot to say about the campaign. As I wrote earlier, "Bloggers and readers are commenting on Autodesk's stupidity on having such an ad campaign. What they do not seem to realise is that they are part of the ad campaign. The Inventor ads can be seen only to people going to the SolidWorks conference, but now thanks to the CAD press they are now visible to people all over the world, which is exactly the whole point of this seemingly stupid excercise."

I suspect something similar is going to happen at Autodesk University 2007. After being kicked out from AU, I have learnt that SpaceClaim is now going to have their own mini-event in a hotel close to AU. If the marketing and PR people at SpaceClaim play their cards properly, this can be far more effective than sitting in a booth in AU.

Many believe that SpaceClaim is a company which does not appear to be in the pink of health. If they don't generate a respectable number of sales soon, then going by Ralph Grabowski's financial analysis, they may need another round of funding (if there is one available). Common sense tells me that for sales to happen people need to first notice the product. What better place to get noticed and written about than Autodesk University, one of the most talked about events in the CAD world. And SpaceClaim, the company and the software, badly needs to get noticed. If they do something smart (or stupid) enough at AU or in its vincinity, it is bound to get noticed and written about.

A well known CEO of a well known CAD software company once told me, "Any press is good press, as long as your name is spelled correctly."

And The Winner Is

Earlier, I mentioned that the Inventor Community at ConnectPress was giving away Acrobat 3D to the person with the best Autodesk Inventor horror story. Apparently they have a winner, a lecturer at the University of Mexico, whose horror story led him to believe that redrawing 3D models is much faster than importing files and spending hours fixing them.

Sadly, this is not something I have heard for the first time.

Rest In Peace

"This release, is a tribute to a dear friend of us, ETRiGAN. He passed away on the 28th of November this year from an overdosis of heroin. He will be missed dearly by all of us, who came to know and love him as a brother. Many of you sceners out there, know how we build true friendship, eventhough we rarely meet, for some of us, we never met, but none the less, we still bond. We share our daily lives via the net. Its with great sadness i present to you a ZENiTH tribute release to ETRiGAN. ETRiGAN - We hope you have found peace at last, we wish to thank you one last time for the time you spent with us, you shall not be forgotten."

So that you may put things into perspective, ZENiTH is a group of softare crackers, ETRiGAN is the one who died and the "tribute release" they are talking about is a crack for a well known CAD software.

When someone dear passes away, a singer will write a song as a tribute, a poet will write a poem. It's only fair that a cracker will write another crack.

Is SpaceClaim Overpriced?

Today I got an interesting email question: "On your blog you seem to suggest that SpaceClaim is overpriced. Do you really think this is true? What value would you put on it? I believe it is good…for instance most of your plug-ins are almost 200.00. Just curious."

Plug-ins have to be “overpriced” because the target audience is just a minor fraction of the total install base of the base application, not like the 4 million that SpaceClaim is targeting. So plug-in developers have to try and recover all their costs with a far lesser number of customers and then manage to make a profit. I know of plug-ins that cost more than the application they are made for. This may sound ridiculous but in cases when you expect to sell only a few licenses, you have to distribute your costs over fewer customers, thereby driving up the price.

Coming back to SpaceClaim, it doesn't matter what it costs them to develop, market and support their product. If the customer does not see enough value addition, he is not going to dish out the dough. The same goes for our plug-ins, or for that matter, for anything under the sun.

If SpaceClaim marketed their product as a designing software to be used by engineers (which I believe they very well can), as opposed to a modification software to be used by the "extended development team", a price of $2000 per year may sound reasonable. It is worth wondering why a company would spend more per year for a modification software for their marketing executive as compared to a designing software for their engineer. Who adds more value to the design?

Taking SolidWorks for comparison, a SolidWorks annual subscription costs $1300 according to their ROI calculator. However, unlike SpaceClaim, there is also a one time license cost of $5000. After 5 years the cost of ownership of SolidWorks and SpaceClaim equals and thereafter SpaceClaim becomes more expensive.

According to the SpaceClaim blog, "At $1700 / year, they've priced it so that it's reasonable for this to be just another tool in your toolbox. To unstick a model. Or to simplify your models for FEM. Or to run at design reviews. Or for a design manager to keep on his laptop." It actually adds up to $2000 a year with the Data Exchange package. I think the phrase "for a design manager to KEEP on his laptop" says a lot.

With SpaceClaim marketing their product as a pretty tool to be used now and then by people here and there, in my opinion, for many companies, the price tag may not match the value addition.

Just my two cents ;-)

CAD Help for All

Kevin DeVoll, a frequent commenter on this blog, has a blog of his own called "CAD Help for All". As the title suggests, the purpose of the blog is to provide help (free, I presume) for anyone using CAD software. You can send "any CAD question" to him at irontest (at) hotmail (dot) com.

Moreover, if you are a person who does not have the time or inclination to maintain a full time blog, but would like to contribute to one, Kevin would be interested in you.