AutoCAD 2016. End of perpetual licenses.

As a natural trend of this globalized, interconnected and almost unpredictable evolution, software ceases to be a boxed product and becomes a service. AutoDesk is not the exception we are already seeing with Adobe, Bentley Systems, Corel, to name a few.

AutoDesk has announced that this year 2015 will be the last one in which perpetual licenses can be purchased. So now, whoever purchases a license will make a monthly or annual payment with the right to access the latest versions and additional services, depending on the amount paid.

AutoCAD LT price

As for prices, you do not see a bad option, considering that every three years every version of AutoCAD is limited by the change of DWG format. For that matter, if someone wants to buy AutoCAD LT, they can pay in a three-year subscription, 360 dollars per year, for a total of 1,080 in the three years. This can be seen in the following table, which honestly is not as clear as it should be in the case of monthly payments where apparently someone should pay 540 in total per year.

AutoCAD 2016 price

In this case, annual licenses run for 1,600 dollars if you choose the three-year subscription. If someone wants a license for a month, the price goes for 210 dollars.

It would be necessary to value how beneficial it is. In the case of Bentley Systems, the packages they are launching are so attractive because they allow access to complete portfolios of lines such as Engineering, Plants, Utilities, etc. However, with that software it stops being attractive, since the life cycle of the products are more extended. For that matter, whoever has Microstation V8 of the 2002 year in their hands, does not have problems since the DGN format has 14 years to be the same. So people jump to new versions in cycles of up to 6 and 8 years, when the excess improvements in the new versions are hard to contain.

Possibly attractive in the current market circumstances, where there are periods that have large projects, which last a number of months, making it more attractive to include in the costs of that project the rental of licenses, if we can call it In this way, instead of buying many perpetual licenses that are then wasted out of date.

The truth is that there is no turning back, there is nothing more to adapt to change and find benefits.

More information can be found with a local supplier, or at the online store of AutoDesk