Alias Design is no longer included in PDSU 2018? Why??

[markus]

I am furious right now for learning that Alias Design 2018 is not included in PDSU, which is strange because Alias Design 2018 is still a product being developed by Autodesk, it has not been discontinued.

The difference between PDS Ultimate and the lower tier was that ALIAS was included. Now you have removed that you have essentially downgraded the suite to whatever was the lower tier! How is this legal? Can we get a refund on the maintenance cost and the price difference between the lower tier upfront cost? We are basically paying you to get downgraded!! What will you remove next year? 3dsmax maybe, or Inventor??

Mudbox was also included in the suite up until 2014, but now I can no longer install and activate it because that version is more than 3 versions old and as far as I know you can not activate previous versions older than 3 versions back! I guess the same will be true for Alias 2017 in a few years, and if we cancel maintenance, what will happen to previous versions like Alias 2017? Will we only be able to use PDSU 2018 without Alias??? Alias was the only reason for paying extra for "Ultimate" so this is totally unreasonable!!

[Florian.Coenen]

Hello @markus

Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us. We don’t make these decisions lightly because it is disruptive to our customers.

We gathered and analyzed the product usage data and before deciding to remove Alias from Product Design Ultimate Suite. Alias is available with a subscription.

By investing in our Subscription offerings, we can give customers more flexible access to our technology. The shift to subscription represents a transition to smoother, more frequent updates with less disruption and more complete features. It will shorten the long tail of customers working on different versions of Alias, which makes it easier for everyone to work together.

While I know this is not the answer you were looking for, I wanted to give you the rationale behind why we made the difficult decision we did.

[robbie_in_oz]

I totally agree!
Not only is Autodesk shedding programs from the suites, but they are also increasing prices on an annual basis. How does that make any sense from a paying users point of view. Pay more, for less?
And how does all this new subscription only scenario make sense? All your hours, weeks, years of work and intellectual property being held for ransom!!! Pay the subscription, or else you can't get access to your own work!!! Which by the way, is in the vecinity of %200 to %250 more expensive for an equivalent Product Collection, as it is to pay for maintenance on a Suite.
Autodesk, I love you! But your making me hate you right now!
I hope you reconsider your money squeezing strategy, cause I can you now, that your pissing a lot of people off!!!!!!!!

[Mark_Wigan]

whether by intent or oversight,

this looks very much like Autodesk wishes to penalise a loyal customer base to force them to surrender their perpetual licenses.

it is sad to report that the giant is being called out on this type of thing more and more these days, but no wonder if they think it is ok to raise costs of a product whilst stripping it down.

ps- as part of the difficult decision making process did Autodesk consider refunding the purchase cost of PDSU to customers that now must jump over to (what you now call) "subscriptions"...

you may be aware that many of us have been "subscribing" for a very long time, & on top of that we also paid a bag of gold coins to get access to the products.

[Anonymous]

A quote comes to mind... I am altering the deal, pray I don’t alter it any further.

The sad thing is that their economy grunts probably saw that not enough people would get pissed that it would matter to their bottom line if they lost them as customers.

The even sadder thing is that I still don't think there exists a viable alternative for Alias (Rhino certainly isn't it).

(And for me, as a product designer, another super crappy thing is that basic tools, like "profile sweep" isn't even available in the cheapest Alias subscription.)

[systembolaget]

Adobe, Autodesk, Dassault ... all 2D/3D software vendors will implement 100% subscription models so also Autodesk can spam our internet browsers with "Alias Design from only $5.99 per hour!" or "Trim convert tool for only $29.99 per week!" and similar shenanigans.

Wait for the day when you just want to make that final nice Bezier birail and a message pops up "Dear systembolaget, your G2 continuity subscription has expired. Please renew or revert to G1 continuity".

Small and medium industrial design studios have no choice. Use crappy Rhino, which really is no option, or pay and pray.

[jojabw]

I totally agree with the comments in this thread and I just installed Design 2018 to discover that some of the really useful skin tool functionality has been removed from Design and that the Skin2012 tool has also been removed. This functionality has been there since I stated using the software in 1995 and it is super helpful to do quick product design modelling. It totally feels like the Design version of Alias is being penalised because it is not Automotive focussed and therefore worth less income wise compared to large automotive studios. Why else remove this functionality?

I too have always been an Alias fan and have been a loyal and happy Alias customer for 23 years but it really feels like Alias is choosing to play games and prioritise cash over customers. I  found that for product design there is really no better CAD tool for quick building and surface sculpting, and Autodesk should care about this before they lose their historic base of designers to another cheaper SW. And all you have to do is look at how Solidworks ate a large chuck of the engineering CAD market to the detriment of PROE, CATIA etc. to see where this could go. Wake up Alias!

[Anonymous]

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@jojabwwrote:

And all you have to do is look at how Solidworks ate a large chuck of the engineering CAD market to the detriment of PROE, CATIA etc. to see where this could go. Wake up Alias!

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I'm afraid saying that Solidworks ate a part of the Catia market is a bad example, since Dassault (who owns Catia) bought Solidworks the moment it made a splash in the industry.

The same way that Autodesk bought T-splines the moment it made a splash, and then prevented everyone else from using that technology.

The only small business alternative right now to Solidworks seems to be OnShape, though again, sadly with a subscription model. And again, using Rhino as an Alias substitute is just punishing yourself. Like Intel vs AMD or Nvidia vs AMD, they have an effective monopoly and from the viewpoint of a small business, I think Autodesk is borderline abusing their position.

I think they're starting to realize the public image of what they are doing though (or just being extremely clever to get a foothold in a relatively new market), because Dynamo (the Autodesk alternative to Grasshopper) is now open source... but again, not included in the cheapest version of Alias, exclusing all small businesses from using it.

Also, tinfoil hat on, but I've never seen a buggier Alias release than 2017, the last included version in the subscription (and I think the last version available for permanent license purchase). I've had at least 5-10 quite serious productivity bugs confirmed by Autodesk employees. Makes me wonder if that was deliberate in some way in order to push people to subscribe more...