digby dart

That was a very sad and embittered post alanmac. Almost spiteful. I found your obvious delight in the potential difficulties Susan may have upgrading though the USA unfortunate. I too seem to have attracted attention from OzCad's 'mike m oz' with a private message scurrilously claiming that Allplan 500 is in excess of AU$10,000.00 (really AU$6050) and Allplan 300 in excess of AU$7500.00 (really AU$4350). He also informs me that to get the same functionality as Vectorworks Architect one would need to spend in excess of AU$13,000 on Allplan. I find these claims to be blatantly untrue and extremely misleading. This was followed by OzCad's 'mike m oz' making some unpleasant inference about the Australian distributor of Archicad. Good luck with your upgrade Susan.

Snap. You obviously hit a nerve Susan. I think you'll find 'mike m oz' is an OzCad recommended trainer. Real name Mike Moore, based in Perth. http://www.ozcad.com.au/support/tuition.html Mikes figures are what intrigue me. It means that OzCad pockets any windfall above at least US$0.46c/AU$1.00 exchange rate. Considering the exchange rate has been as high as US$0.88/AU$1.00 of late this represents conciderable profit. Very enlightening. You are one very bright feisty woman Susan. Well done.

While Nicholas concentrates his harsh attack on poor Susan I think it wise to return to the original thread. Ozcad should sell vectorworks in its original flavours for comparable price to that in the USA. Make the extras optional. If not Australian buyers should be able to buy from Nemetschek USA direct. Australians had the same problem with music CD's until parallel importing was allowed. The arguments were the same. I thought legislation had fixed this for similar overseas intellectual property issues - perhaps not. For anyone interested The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission would know. Meanwhile Nicholas leave Susan alone. She has a right to express her opinion without you playing Master of Business Administration.

Hello Again, Since last posting here some 10 days ago we have done a fair bit of research on other Architectural Cad software available to us both here in Australia and in the USA. For what its worth we were pretty unanimous that Vectorworks represents great value and is clearly a class leader in the USA. US$1295 for Vectorworks Architect on Amazon from Nemetschek North America direct represents excellent value. In Australia Vectorworks Architect is trying to compete with higher specified Architectural Cad. Most notable is that offered by the parent company Nemetschek Allplan. In Australia for around AU$4000 Vectorworks Architect with Renderworks is competing with Allplan 300 Architecture. For around AU$5000 Vectorworks Designer with Renderworks starts to edge towards Allplan 500 Architecture and Archicad. Both Allpan and Archicad are Bim's. A different league of Architectural Cad. There are other products we compared but I merely wish to show here the variance in Australian prices for products owned by the same parent company - Nemetschek. We were pleasantly surprised to see the level of Allplan technology appearing in Vectorworks which further increased the value for money aspect of Vectorworks Architect in the USA. Not so in Australia with Vectorworks Architect being priced comparably with Allplan 300 Architect. Simply put: In the USA Vectorworks Architect with Renderworks is half the price of Allplan 300 Architecture. In Australia they are priced about the same. It would seem prudent to go with Allplan or one of its direct class competitors. I returned to post this here because I am indebted to all the forum posts for information on Vectorworks and wish to give some knowledge back which may be of some use. Reading the many honest appraisals has been invaluable. Amazing product for the money... in the USA.

I admire your enthusiasm and loyalty to the Australian distributor, but with the current 0.84c credit card exchange rate and Australian GST taken into account buying direct from the USA would be AU$1,818.56. OzCAD in Australia charge AU$3,184.50. Thats AU$$1,365.94 more. Hardly great value for a few compulsory add-ons. If OzCAD sold it in the USA it would equate to US$2,418.37. Rest assured US sales would be well down. Arris and DataCAD would be happy. Has anyone here from Australia purchased Vectorworks Architect direct from the USA. Any problems with upgrades from Nemetschek thereafter? Thanks

lol.

I am from Australia. We were considering Vectorworks as a companion product to Sketchup. The price for Vectorworks Architect 12.5 here is VERY ambitious. Some 70% more than the USA. Upgrades are similarly ambitious. We asked the Australian distributor why and were told '...it's expensive doing business in Australia." Mindscape don't think so, Turbocad is actually cheaper here for TurboCAD than in the USA. In real terms most Architectural CAD costs the same. Accordingly Vectorworks is now off our list. Pity really because the package looked complete and robust. Perhaps the free trade agreement between Australia and the USA has escaped Ozcad's and Nemetschek's attention.