If this is true, and I have no reason to believe it’s not, then a real feces fest is en-route:
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Oh, yeah, it’s true. I got the email, although I was booted from the partner program years ago.
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Wow. That’s insane.
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they try to milk more money from stones.
And expect that in the end, they will come for the end users again.
I said it in the past, but for a manufacturing company the software costs over a certain threshold are just unbearable.
You have to cut personnel and make huge productivity leaps to keep licenses and servers running.
the problem is many companies do not have a specialized CAD workforce and those leaps are impossible, so you better jump ships hoping for the better…
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Good time for Siemens to step up and give SE some major marketing support.
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unfortunately Siemens seems unable to capitalize it, probably the royalties from parasolid, DCubed sketch engine etc are just enough for them at this point in time…
I think Siemens has the opposite problem that DS has. DS has a big brother product that doesn’t seem that popular, and the little brother is overwhelmingly more likeable and usable. Siemens NX is in my estimation very popular, while people have some reservations about Solid Edge.
I’d rather have the problem Siemens has. Solidworks is not going to feed Catia sales, it’s going to cannibalize them, and people will find other solutions to do the things they needed Catia to do. From the sounds of things, I’d avoid Catia at all cost, especially if they are asking people to replace SW with it. The people who need Catia probably already have Catia. NX is the software that might actually make new sales. I can’t see anyone who has done their homework buying new 3dxperience licenses.
Solid Edge is a good solid product. It doesn’t have the flair that SW has. It doesn’t have the carefree interface, or a handful of ways to do everything. It’s just a little more controlled and reserved, and less effusive. And to be honest, I don’t think Siemens wants a fancy pants little brother eating or preventing big brother sales. DS has resorted to increasingly nasty tricks to get people to abandon SW.
I don’t think it’s going to go the way they want it to. The choice is not so much Works vs Edge as it is DS vs Siemens.
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As a solo entrepreneur (mech. designer) providing free tools for SW users as a hobby, am I now a “independent software vendor”? Well, this fits the logic that DS/SW has…new customer can have -50% license discount and old customers pay some more 
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The bad decisions keep on piling up. I don’t know if it’s to try to force people towards Catia but these types of decisions over the last 5 years are certainly not going to benefit SolidWorks, nor their partners, nor the user.
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This kind of thing makes me glad that I’m retiring in two years, nine months, and twenty days. If Dassault gets too crazy I should be able to keep doing my job with SW2025 for that long, and then it will be someone else’s problem.
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This is an attempt to get users into their “cloud” product. XDesign is not SolidWorks. It’s CATIA in the cloud with a SolidWorks skin. ITs not compatilble with Desktop SWX, you lose all feature data.
I’ve heard from “sources” this is the strategy, keep raise desktop prices and making it less “palatable” eventually so companies will go all in on the cloudworks version. This price increases for desktop are evident, forced two years subscription on new licenses that is more expensive since it includes “cloud services” that you can’t opt out of. Core price has increased, maintenance price has increased. Network floating licenses and maintenace have increased even more.
I see this with other software as well:
- We used to pay $150 for a BB license, and pay $30 a year for maintenance and support per license. Now its subscription only and costs $440 per license.
- Snag it, I bought for $25, paid $25 to upgrade to 2024. 2025 version is sub only for $39 per year…I canceled and will continue with 2024.
- Fences 5 purchased a year ago for $24. Fences 6 went sub for $10 per year. Not as bad as the others and they still offer the perpetual license for $30. Upgrade to v6 is $25 perpetual but they offer 2 dollars off the sub for $8. So you see what they want you to do.
All of these are desktop installs, mature, and receive few new features. All cash grabs they don’t deserve.
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Check this post from Manish https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mkumar3ds_solidworks-partnership-innovation-activity-7360758984074584065-HBBK
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I’m not sure what this strategy is supposed to be. First, they take away the big dog’s bone, and then, after some criticism, give back a smaller one that sounds better.
How exactly will the program expansion and innovation rewards look? What are the concrete plans?
Also, I agree with Artem’s comment below. They should at least remove the royalty fees on free licenses. Free licenses help increase reach because people are more likely to try something if there’s no cost barrier.
EDIT: Plans are given in the post. Celebrating Our Partners and Building the Future Together | LinkedIn
- 4 free licenses of SOLIDWORKS Premium - $20K/year value
- Many partners will pay $0 until they grow past $100,000 in revenue.
This is definitely a step in the right direction and could be a big help for new startups.
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More details will be available after the webinar.
When a software reaches a critical mass of user base and a certain level of maturity like an OS or CAD, we have a de facto monopoly since you cannot move around your data without losing pieces here and there. If you work in a company with multiple system integrations and decades of legacy data, you will face a lot of costs and losses to cope with a migration. Especially if you are not a big multinational, but not a so small company either.
And it is going to take years to plan and deploy, which for a manufacturing company it is not something you can do every couple of years.
manufacting giants like Yamaha motorcycles and Toyota used to have (and still have) in house CAD software development (or agreements with local software makers to customize their CAD tools under their system division supervision) that made them sort of independent from foreigner software vendors, but the development was slow and their tools are bulky and kind of old nowadays. Yamaha is migrating to NX and teamcenter, but they have lot of issues with data management, training and tons of legacy data. Toyota is still a mess of CAD platforms, with little to no integration between its group companies (catia for bodies, proE for powertrain, Fujitsu iCAD for machinery, solidworks and others here and there)
Now imagine your software provider suddenly pulling the rug. Especially a US based one, since their government could limit their abroad operations and they could be weaponized against countries that do not align with US government foreign policy: export control, national security, etc. and you suddenly cannot activate your license anymore or your 3dx space will shut down in your country and you have like 30 days to take all your data back (and hope they will offer you that grace time and some bulk export tools, otherwise saving one file at time is going to take a lot)
If you think it is fiction, think about how the banking system, the credit card circuits and swift system were used since COVID, for what were basically politically motivated actions, de facto bypassing the juridical system.
A company like Microsoft, potentially, could shut down half of the world or cause colossal disruptions.
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One can only hope that Siemens see’s this as an opportunity to increase market share. But they could easily see it as an opportunity to follow suit and create their own money grab.
I know I could easily be enticed to switch with a little bit of incentive. Every year I feel like DSS makes the pain of staying a little closer to the pain of switching.
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The problem is Siemens are just following suite, albeit slower. They have just recently pulled the bait’n switch on yearly sub licenses and are not offering it any more (initially arbitrarily putting its price up for year prior).
Considering their pricing now… it was never as much value as SW, but now its even less so and its not headed in a good direction.
It seems all over the world there are monopolist greed, tyrannical drives just taking over every aspect of everything. There seems to be no end in sight.
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Thanks for sharing my post here. I didn’t expect to be sent links to Reddit, Twitter and CADmunity by my friends 
What I read in Manish’ post is that they will offer nothing new in return. You already get four licenses, although I thought it was five. And from how I read it now, only ‘startups and innovators’ are exempt. I’d bet that this only includes companies they choose to include. But we’re over 100k anyway.
What will this change for CAD Booster?
- With the current pricing for my product Lightning (€160 or €220 per user per year), they are demanding 20-30% of my revenue.
- It’s less bad for Drew (10%) since it’s priced higher, although they don’t specify how they handle monthly subscriptions. Edit: they DO explain how to handle monthly/quarterly subscriptions.
- I have to start registering everything for them, which is a lot of work every quarter.
- I have to share my sales numbers and revenue numbers with them.
- I have to kill our free add-in TimeSavers
A couple of Siemens and PTC guys reached out again. Switching is not a realistic option since we have to start building products from scratch, but still.
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The company I work for changed from SE to SW about five years ago after nearly two decades of SE usage. While that statement may be true for some or many, it’s not true across the board. There was little to no cost/value change going from SE to SW, possibly a negative. File management was what we looking for.
Unfortunately, hindsight is much better than foresight.
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Such a true statement
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