mwg
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Registered: 19th Feb 04
Location: South Lakes
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I've been charged with the task of looking in to upgrading our AutoCAD.
At the moment we have approx. 25 people in the office, 5 of which are Technicians using CAD all the time so have 2009 LT for those 5.
The rest are occasional users and have a mixture of 2004 LT and 2000 LT at present.
I've got prices for upgrading the 5No. 2009 users to 2011 and then we could get a couple of additional 2011 licenses and use the portable license feature so people can use it on their machine as and when required. There tends to only be one or two other people using it outside of the Technicians so its not cost effective for everyone to have their own license when we can just move the license around instead.
Is there is a way that once we have done that we can pay a set fee every year and always have the latest version sent to us on release, some sort of payment plan that means we always have the latest version?
Currently we are looking at an initial outlay of approx:
£2,500 for a pack of 5 license upgrades to 2011
£2,000 for 2 additional full 2011 licenses
Then every year after approx. (assuming prices dont change much year to year):
£3,500 to keep updating the 7 licenses that we would have.
That seems like a hell of a lot of money every year to me, surely there is a better and more cost effective way than that?
I've got a meeting with the directors early next week so trying to gather as much info as I can so thought it was worth asking here too on the off chance someone knows!
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Whittie
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Registered: 11th Aug 06
Location: North Wales Drives: BMW, Corsa & Fiat
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I was doing a repair in an office full of CAD users two weeks ago.
I've sent him an email with a copy & paste of your post, i'll let you know the reply I get.
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mwg
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Registered: 19th Feb 04
Location: South Lakes
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Brilliant thanks 
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AndyKent
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Registered: 3rd Sep 05
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Look up the AutoCAD subscription.
I *think* you have to buy the products up to date, then an additional fee for the subscription package. For as long as you keep paying the subscription you get 'free' upgrades.
I say 'free' because you still pay the subscription cost, but its a hell of a lot cheaper than buying all over again.
Users on the subscription package also get access to other Autodesk products based on Autocad, like Impression for example - another 'free' benefit.
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Brett
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Registered: 16th Dec 02
Location: Manchester
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PirateBay
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mwg
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Registered: 19th Feb 04
Location: South Lakes
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That subscription thing sounds more like what we are looking for. I'll see what I can find out about it. Ta.
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Doug
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Registered: 8th Oct 03
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Consider yourself lucky! That's pretty cheap licensing tbh
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Simon
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Registered: 24th Apr 03
Location: Oxfordshire
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We are on the Autodesk Subscription service at work, just happened that I was downloading the revit architecture 2011 suite today.
It's supposedly the cheapest way to keep upto date but hardly any of the computers in my office will run the more advanced features now  I think something has recently changed to make it get quite expensive to upgrade old licenses in the future
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mwg
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Registered: 19th Feb 04
Location: South Lakes
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quote:
Originally posted by Doug
Consider yourself lucky! That's pretty cheap licensing tbh
In the scheme of things considering we have a turnover of over a million and healthy profit it doesn't seem expensive in that respect for the money it makes us but its money they haven't been spending up till now so they wont want to
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ashleh
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Registered: 23rd Dec 08
Location: Nottingham
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quote:
Originally posted by loafofbrett
PirateBay
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mwg
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Registered: 19th Feb 04
Location: South Lakes
User status: Offline
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Anyone know if files created in AutoCAD LT 2011 are completely compatible with LT 2009?
We've had problems with drawings created in 2009 then opened by 2000 or 2004 and you cant see the annotative text and dont want the same sort of problems again this time around.
And yes they still haven't upgraded 3 months on from the original post, I've just had to remind them so they are looking at it again now
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ed
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Registered: 10th Sep 03
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Files are never forwards compatible with any of these kinds of software. I've had this problem before and it's very frustrating.
[Edited on 17-09-2010 by ed]
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mwg
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Registered: 19th Feb 04
Location: South Lakes
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It sure is frustrating!
2000 and 2004 the text was compatible. But 2004 and 2009 the text isn't compatible. If anyone knew for definite if the text is compatible between 2009 and 2011 it'd be great. I'll have to have a look and see if there is an email address on the AutoCAD site and ask them direct.
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AndyKent
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Registered: 3rd Sep 05
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No definate answer but like ed I wouldn't expect so.
Can you not set up LT 2011 to default save in 2009 format?
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ed
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Registered: 10th Sep 03
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I doubt you can do that either, in Solidworks, once you've upgraded there's no backwards compatibility of files. Once you've saved something in 2010 format, there's no going back to 2009 or later. It's the same with Labview, Inventor and all the other big engineering software 
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mwg
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Registered: 19th Feb 04
Location: South Lakes
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You can set 2009 up to save as far back as R12 version. You'll be able to open it on a R12 AutoCAD to view it but because the text is annotative none of it appears, just the lines that you've drawn appear.
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mwg
Member
Registered: 19th Feb 04
Location: South Lakes
User status: Offline
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downloading a trial version of 2011 to see if its going to be an issue
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