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Maybe I am going to get into real trouble for this but here goes anyway.

How come here in Australia to purchase say Vectorworks Fundamentals is $2036.10 AU including GST and $1851.00 AU excluding GST. If I lived in the US I could purchase Vectorworks Fundamentals for $995.00 US which given today's currency exchange rates is $1261.13 AU?

That is a big difference Australians are paying - even without the GST the difference is $589.87 AU and with it $$775.00 AU.

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That is a big difference Australians are paying - even without the GST the difference is $589.87 AU and with it $$775.00 AU.

What's the point in comparing prices with GST (VAT for most people here)? If you buy VW for a business, you get the GST back.

I'd imagine each distributor charges what they consider (a) reasonable and (b) acceptable.

National distributors, including OzCAD, mostly sell a relatively small number of licences and still have to have tech support, do marketing etc., whereas in the U.S.A. NNA handles all this. Obviously in matters like this, the economies of scale start to work.

I would not like a situation where a key part of my income-generating business infrastructure would not have any local expertise and support. No-one in the other end would know what a millimetre is...

The cost of ownership of VW is anyway very low - almost insignificant. Let's consider the first 5-6 years:

Initial purchase 1850

3 upgrades (eg) 1410

Total 3260

In these 5-6 years an average professional does something like 8000-9600 hours of actual work (1600 hrs/year), so it is 30-40 cents per hour. Let's say $3 per day, tax deductible. Most of us spend more on coffee...

EDIT

The upgrades are assumed to be released at 18 month intervals. How long they actually "last", depends on when in the release cycle you buy the initial licence. If immediately after releae, the 6 years & ?30 per hour (?33 to be exact) applies.

Edited by Petri
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In Australia, you are also getting a number of localized add-ons when you purchase the product.

The best thing to do is to pose the question to your local distributor.

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Interesting note in the upfrontezine cad newsletter today - a reply from VectorWorks CEO on comments made in the last issue when commenting on the Nemetschek/Graphisoft takeover that VW is principally an 'Affordable and American' product... he comments,

"VectorWorks is sold broadly around the world: 40% of our customers are in the Asia/Pacific region, 35% in Europe, and 25% in North America. Although we are proud of our success here in the North American market, I think saying that your positioning us as 'Affordable and American' may oversimplify things a bit."

- Sean Flaherty, ceo

Nemetschek North America

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That is interesting. I would have thought more than 25 percent of the VW user base is in North America. In fact, I would have done the same as the upFront writer and guessed that nearly all of the user base is in North America.

Do you have a link to that newsletter? The last one I can find is #501, dated January 16, 2006 (but obviously meaning 2007). When I click on "Next Issue" I get a "Not Found" message.

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Jan15 - that is why we non North American users sometimes show our frustration about the NNA focus on North American housing capabilities. With 3 out of every 4 users from outside of the US and Canada our needs should be better met.

There needs to be more effort put into providing non housing and international capability.

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Mike, it's odd there would be so much emphasis on a small part of the user base. But is Asian/Pacific construction as standardized as North American? Do they build the same way in Mongolia and India and Australia? If not, there might not be a large enough group anywhere to support VW standard components.

Maybe we should be comparing the North American user base to Australia alone. How much of that 40% is Australia? It can't be much. Forty percent of 400,000 is 160,000 seats. That would be one seat for every 125 people in Austalia. If VW's popularity is the same in Australia as in North America, that would come to under 7,000 seats, which would explain the high per-seat price of the local add-ons.

The North American 25% is 100,000 users who share construction standards. That might be by far the largest such group of users. And it might be even higher if the Asia/Pacific 40% includes a lot of designers of the American-style houses in Japan that I keep hearing about.

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Jan,

It is of course true that the largest single market is the US. It is also true that architects are the largest single group of users, but in the 400,000 there are lots of others, too.

The situation is, however, that a national distributor has to first buy & sell the US-only content, then (as Katie repeatedly demands) create and sell the local content. Then either

- the distributor has to reconfigure the system, produce installation CD:s and write new documentation; or

- each user has to go through an extensive and complicated process of configuring his/her system to use the local content as default.

And so on.

There are more and more features that are tied to the "Industry Series", eg. wall styles. If an Australian or Finnish user needs wall styles, he or she has to pay for American content. If he or she wants to use the plant tool, the same. And so on.

I have no idea why the American distributor, NNA, can't follow its own advice and localise the product, then sell the localised version at a higher price.

In short: we need the functionality but do not want to pay for the American the content. Also the priorities could be different as comes to development of new features.

If someone would design an "American style house" in Finland or Japan, the content would still be useless.

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Well according to latest reports from NNA they only have 25% of the north american market and 40% of the asia market.

Um ... you might want to look at the quote again, because that's not what NNA claims:

VectorWorks is sold broadly around the world: 40% of our customers are in the Asia/Pacific region, 35% in Europe, and 25% in North America.
[emphasis mine]

The quote gives a regional breakdown of NNA's customer base; it does NOT make any claim about NNA's marketshare. The fact that 25% of NNA's customer base is in North America says nothing about the size of the North American marketplace or what percentage of the North American market those customers represent.

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Getting back to the original question regarding price....

Usually a software company sets a local RRP in each sector. That it sells for a certain price is set by NNA. Soaftware is always cheaper in the USA. Other territories vary but generally EEC and UK are regarded as most as being the highest prices.

For example.

If I want to buy a seat of SolidWorks in the USA it starts at $3995. In the UK it is ?3995 - effectively double the price. I am amazed that in the EEC and UK there has not been investigations into price fixing by the European Union. All the main MCAD vendors do this - Autodesk, Dassault, UGS, PTC etc. Personally I am sick of gettign emails from news sites in the USA offering me XYZ software for a dollar price ....only to find I am unable to purchase it in the UK for anything near that price.

Some vendors do offer a worldwide price - good on them. Think 3, Ashlar, IronCAD to name a few.

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The question of Vectorworks price difference here in Australia came about in a roundabout fashion. A close friend here in Australia is studying Landscape Architecture. He is a mature age student and moving through third year has had excellent results and even won some awards for his work.

I use Vectorworks so we inquired here in Australia about a student license for him. I was told the Vectorworks student version was a certain price and my friend of course went on line to compare prices from the USA etc and discovered it was cheaper there. The student version has a limitation in that it prints with a watermark and therefore is useless to him as he wanted to use it for his work. Currently he uses AutoCAD, 3D Max, Illustrator and the like. He then looked into other prices from around the world and therefore I posted this thread.

I have to say ? I am not in any way being critical of OzCAD and their pricing policy. Julian has helped me enormously with his support here in Australia. His support is always excellent and he really goes the extra mile. Also I have told him my belief is even at the price level it is here ? Vectorworks is still cheap software. I just found it interesting that in different parts of the world the price can very so much.

The student version printing with a watermark ? I do not know what other software companies do with theirs. Both my friend and I have been really disappointed the student version was useless to him as it printed with a watermark ? how could he use it for presentations and the like? We understand others use student versions professionally and that robs software companies and their distributors but were prepared to give written assurances and guarantees to offset that.

I use Vectorworks and love the software ? I still think it is cheap ? especially in the USA. It would have been good if my friend could have used it especially because his work is excellent and if he wins another award for a Studio he is currently doing ? just would have been great if it had been done in Vectorworks for all to see.

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The student version has a limitation in that it prints with a watermark and therefore is useless to him as he wanted to use it for his work.

Are you sure your information is current?

According to the academic FAQ:

Q: Will printed drawings contain banners or watermarks?

A: Our educational licenses do not contain banners or watermarks.

Maybe it's one of those "localized add-ons" Katie referred to that y'all are paying extra for? crazy.gif

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We did get told here in Oz about the water mark when printing from the student version - perhaps it is an Aussie thing.

Please be aware I do not think given our smaller user base here we are being treated poorly re price. OzCAD over here is excellent and as I have said I still think VW is cheap.

I will send Julian an email and ask but here in Australia he may have his reasons for having the software that way and if so that is up to him.

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Well, you started this, Darrel. There was nothing "roundabout" about it. I'm yet to see the Uni tutor or professor who rejects a student project if it has some watermarks.

The student version has a limitation in that it prints with a watermark and therefore is useless to him as he wanted to use it for his work.

Nonsense. Unless "work" means something else than Uni projects.

However, if those watermarks are a fact, perhaps NNA should take a leaf from the book of another Nemetschek company: ArchiCAD's educational version files cannot be opened in the commercial version and vice versa.

Considering the fact that large, famous and successful architectural practices in Australia are running only educational versions of AutoCAD (BYO - bringing your own - is a condition of employment), any talk about some assurances is, I'm afraid, a bit limp.

And the less famous ones - those who don't attract any students? Well, during my most recent stop-over in Singapore I found out where they obviously get their CAD-software from.

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Petri,

"I'm yet to see the Uni tutor or professor who rejects a student project if it has some watermarks"

Seven Sheets mostly A1 I think all colored up and pretty ? printed at the printers ? would have looked great with a big WATERMARK through it ?

"Nonsense. Unless "work" means something else than Uni projects"

See above and he does not work at all!!

"any talk about some assurances is, I'm afraid, a bit limp"

I think when purchasing the student version written assurances are required. Have a look at the downloadable pdf.

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I don't believe the watermark goes across the whole page. I think it's rather small and off the main portion of the drawing. Check with the distributor, just to make sure.

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Petri,

Now that is an idea - just stop using A4s from the Epson Stylus - that may solve the problem.

And print an A1 on A0 and trim away - now that is an even better idea - what would we call this a CAD work around.

You know I find your comments and contributions sometimes to be really helpful, sometimes generous, on other occasions fun and quite clever but on other occasions just full of - how do you say it in Europe? - shizen housen.

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Well, be that is it may. The fact & reality is that educational pricing is so widely misused that software firms must to something about it.

I have lately even started to like dongles: I hear that VW sales have doubled in many countries where dongles have been introduced.

You can surely come up with a suitable Aussie description for demanding special treatment based on some "written assurances". It might relate to .

And while you are at it, get a book on geography: quite a few languages are spoken in Europe.

'Ava good day and please do not read my comments if you don't like them. At least I won't read any of yours.

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I just want to add that I do not think VW is cheap. I do not want NNA to get the wrong message. It might be competitive but it certainly is not cheap - it is the most expensive bit of software we use and we have to pay for an upgrade every year or two for each pc.

VW 12.5 Designer / RW is about ?1,600 plus VAT in the UK.

Now that is a lot of money to spend every two years on each machine.

And there are very little local add ons here in the UK.

I could get autoCADlight for about ?610 and sketchup for free.

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