What It Costs if you cannot get relevant answers to your questions?

13% (in time) of a normal working year is what it cost me to arrive fairly at the decision I did about Inventors value as an 'unprofitably' product for us to own and apply to components of our business.  It represents only a fraction of what time was actually spent, out of fairness I have not included time taken discussing the problems with Autodesk nor other problems encountered within areas that would have little or no bearing on whether I would use the product or recommend it or not to a customer.  Equally it does not take into account the cost of software, learning and training costs or other implementation costs that can be expected when converting from one piece of software to another.

It does include some of the time we were attempting to convert existing models from MDT and AutoCAD but this was so unsuccessful we will rightfully assume that it is not about to happen properly any way.  This is no surprise, Autodesk have never got this correct, starting right back with Autosolid (1987) we have never been able to fully transfer any meaningful models through to the next level in a cost effective manner.  (Cost we have borne in the past but should no more!)

If you roll the purchase price, training, testing and implementation cost together it is not hard to see that Inventor is not going to have a sufficient productivity increase to cover this deficit and for small operations and single person businesses this is a very real impediment to Inventors selection and given Autodesk’s and the dealers reticence to engage fully at this level it also works against their efforts as well.

However if you have never applied 3D in AutoCAD or Mechanical Desktop, Inventor (or another) may look a good proposition but I would caution that you may end up using a product to create data when there may, at hand, be a more productive method available, being ignored.

Some may say that I am talking in peanuts but experience has shown me that if a product is not right for me the cost of ownership to a larger customer does not automatically amortise out the cost to a realistic or profitable level.  Indeed some of these costs can escalate quite quickly and lost project time, for some customers, could be measured using my annual turnover as an hourly or daily figure.

I was willing to change, and believe I have judged and assessed Inventor fairly against the AutoCAD-MDT team and the only other factor that counts when deciding on change, ‘will it be more profitable and if so when’?  My conclusion is that it would not be, and quite frankly may never be so taking into account what Autodesk have told me relating their future development plans and the inherent ‘inflexibility’ this will instil into the product and the cumulative costs incurred in evaluating each new version to see if there is a fit.

We have come less distance in 3D PC-CAD compared to 2D despite an almost equal period of development and for many we have paid dearly for the privilege.  What we want now is an ability to realise some profitability.

‘Some of what it costs is just too much for too little return!’

I will close by stating, ‘none of this would have been necessary or have happened if Autodesk had co-operated with one of its customers in a manner that matched what our customers expect from us and reasonably so!
 

R. Paul Waddington
Proprietor – cadWest.