It used to be that Microstation had a full-featured demo version that would save files and plot and and everything, but would shut off I think every 30 minutes. An architect acquaintance who had just left a big firm to go out on his own got that free version and would simply save the file, exit the program, and start it all back up again every 25 minutes. He used a kitchen timer to keep track. I don't know that he ever bought the program.
The student version of AutoCAD used to be watermarked, and boy what a pain that was. Without rigorous infection control (sound familiar?), it was all too easy to unwittingly insert a block that one of my students had created into one of my commercial DWG's, or one that someone had posted on-line without a warning. I should have just used two separate computers.
So, if you were Autodesk, how would you set things up so that people could legitimately learn on their own, without giving away the product to people using it commercially? Save but not plot? Take the old Microstation route?
