Education Users

[barkest]

I hope this post does not come across as too much of a complaint. Its not meant that way and indeed the last two updates 15 & 16 have been very good indeed. Its not about the software its about the way we are treated. The best way I can explain this is by referencing Autodesk (I am not a fan btw).

I appreciate that non-education users pay several thousand but we still have to pay. Without going into too much detail we have over 70 seats at a cost in excess of £200 per seat per year. In other words we are also paying customers. I think its worth stating that at the outset.

Cut Down Version

We get a cut down version of our software. No export to 3D PDF for example. If a student asks me how to do this I have no idea as I do not have access. It took several months and a lot of help from Jim just to get export to Collada. Why would you just take features out is beyond me.

Autodesk has no such restrictions.

No Support and Bottom of the Pile

We have nowhere to go for support and when new software is available we get it after everyone else. In the pecking order its service select, everyone else then education. I spent over 2-months back and forth to our main supplier to get help on installation it was laughable. Only through my own persistance that they finally cracked and helped me. I would say again - we are still paying but not getting any recognition for this and no help at all.

If a student has an issue with a download or licensing issues we fire of an email and then wait and wait and wait....

Autodesk provide support via email to educators (in reality its not great)

Watermark

Up until a year ago the paid student version was not watermarked. Now it is and decision that is bewildering.

Autodesk products are not watermarked.

Free Student Version

Students can download a free version that is licensed for 1-year at which point it has to be renewed. This is watermarked and rightly so. No support again and the usual restrictions.

Autodesk give access to every single one of their products for 3-years (the typical length of a degree course). Its brilliant, and the students get to try out other applications. Great marketing....

No Voice

Education users really do seem to be the poor relations when in reality we should be looked after and listened to. I work with VW every day and with on many varied projects. We have nowhere to go with our experiences (maybe in the future).

Educators

I sell your product every year to a 100+ students. Far from being treated like a member of the VW team I am left wondering some days why I bother. I asked several month ago to remove some of the restrictions and sorry Jim but you were going to look into it. Nothing happened (I really appreciate you are very very busy).

I hope the message is getting through that we need more attention. We are paying customers, we are the future and we would like a voice and some recognition.

[PVA - Admin]

First:

People like you are why I come to work every day. You care, your 'complaint' (constructive criticism) is backed up by completely fair comparison and experience, and you suggest a path to improvement that benefits everyone. I wish all my interactions went like this.

Second:

The ONLY reason that any of the software's abilities were removed for the educational versions has been to prevent the abuse of the free educational licenses. Sometimes there is a bug in the installer that doesn't add the appropriate modules, but those are not intentional and we normally get those fixed ASAP but those issues are separate.

I personally feel we are too heavy handed with this however, the watermark is one thing but excluding Export 3D PDF for example is removing a huge component of the software in many workflows. It isn't even advertised that the educational versions might be different. In fact, I believe we specifically say that a watermark is the only difference between the EDU and the PRO versions, which is not the case.

The 1 year renewal was generally thought of to be superior, with the idea being that students would always be able to get the most recent software, but as you describe and I am hearing more and more from students and educators, they have a hard time when they cant keep the SAME version throughout their degree, or if they cant get their hands on a specific version that (in the case of students) their instructor is teaching. I feel that proposing other options for license length backed up by those reasons is something that would be taken into consideration.

Some good news however: The majority of the issues listed here I believe fall under my new scope of responsibility and I now have a project folder with this as its core concept. Also, from my viewpoint it does not appear that the second-class nature of the treatment of students that you describe was ever intentional. This distinction may seem like something minor, but since it appears to have been mostly accidental, (or perhaps just a result of no one being directly responsible for it), the slack can be picked up and change may happen more quickly.

[Hippocode]

Indeed this is very very very important.

The biggest reason why Autocad has been such a succes in the past is because the program was accessible for everyone. Every school I went to teached Autocad only, While we were always given an older version from school, every student could get their hands on the latest version (cracked :blush: ).

While I do not encourage illegal software, just the fact that every student could easily start working with only one software, the choice was easy. It made me discover the program in my free time out of interest. At that point, I didn't even know others existed.

So in whatever way it's done, students need easy acces to Vectorworks as they are your future clients.

[barkest]

Thanks for the kind reply Jim

FYI

Autocad

all of their software is available to students for 3-years and to educators indefinitely whilst they remain educators, as evidenced by email address and campus card. No restrictions and no watermarks

SketchUp

Make is free to everyone. Pro is less than 5% of the cost of VW to our institution and the license is valid for 1-year. Pro for Educators is free, indefinitely, on proof as above. You can also use Twilight renderer for free. No restrictions and no watermarks

Cinema 4D

Cost of and edu license is approx £100 for 18-months. No restrictions and no watermarks

Adobe CC

Monthly cost is less than half of the normal cost. No restrictions and no watermarks.

Vectorworks

Over twice the cost of the most expensive option above (Cinema 4D) and has restrictions and watermarks.

I think you get the idea.

I believe it would be a positive move to give educators VW free with no restrictions (watermarks are not an issue), in addition to some kind of support similar to service select so that they can flag up issues and support the students better.

Students should be able to get a 3-year license on proof of enrolment. Keep the watermarks but please lose the restrictions.

thanks again

Edited April 5, 2016 by barkest

[Art V]

I also agree on the comments from Barkest and Wouter (Hippocode) regarding educational licenses.

They should preferably be full versions of the respective commercial counterparts, but watermarking should not be a problem and should also make clear that work created is not meant for commercial purposes.

I can understand the reluctance to provide educational versions with full capabilities for fear of abuse for commercial projects, but those who want to already can if they look for hacked/cracked versions on the internet.

That being said, it would also be good if Vectorworks would pay some extra attention to the import/export side compatibility (dwg, GIS, 3D formats) because if that leaves things to be desired people may get the impression that compatibility with 3rd party software is not good enough and may in the end decide to go with a competitor product. (yes this is a bit of a "pet peeve" as I keep running into this in the reality of multi-format files work and it would improve usability of Vectorworks in such work environments)

[barkest]

I should also say that some kind of certification would be great. So my students could become VW Certified and the educator could have VW Trainer certification.

[PVA - Admin]

I should also say that some kind of certification would be great. So my students could become VW Certified and the educator could have VW Trainer certification.

This is very much something we want to do. We also want to eventually provide at least a basic curriculum of materials instructors can work with if they like and build upon.

The free vs charged issue currently varies amongst distributors, but I am not sure anyone has taken a hard look at this system in quite some time. I'll add that to the proposal.

[barkest]

This is very much something we want to do. We also want to eventually provide at least a basic curriculum of materials instructors can work with if they like and build upon.

Please count me in if you need a class to beta test against. I would be happy to be involved.

[Art V]

Maybe Vectorworks could also develop a "Vectorworks for AutoCAD users" manual for those working with Vectorworks and Autocad (e.g. when settling on a workflow between the two programs) or those switching to Vectorworks from AutoCAD.

This could make it for those considering purchasing VW in addition to AutoCAD or switching to VW a bit easier to make the purchase or switch.

It wouldn't be the first time when an AutoCAD user takes a glance at VW and then dismisses it because of not understanding some of the basic philosophy/concepts of VW.

[Kevin McAllister]

I am currently a student myself (back to school as a mature student to switch careers). I bought a student version of Rhino. The student version is $195 PC or $95 Mac (the Mac version is still missing a few features but you can have access to the WIP beta). The version you buy is fully functional and identical to the "pro" version and has no license restrictions (ie. it is permissible to do commercial work).

The licensing restrictions were fundamentally the biggest issue for me with VW. As a theatre designer I often worked at Universities/Colleges using my full license. If I was given student assistants they would use educational versions. File exchange would be difficult because I didn't want to contaminate my professional resources with the watermark. It meant I needed to parcel out parts of the project rather than allowing them to work in the primary project file. It would often turn into a lot of extra work to interact with the educational version as a professional. If they were coming to work on my project, I would have no issue supplying the software, but in these instances I was working on the institutions project.

Kevin

[PVA - Admin]

This is very much something we want to do. We also want to eventually provide at least a basic curriculum of materials instructors can work with if they like and build upon.

Please count me in if you need a class to beta test against. I would be happy to be involved.

You are on the list!

Maybe Vectorworks could also develop a "Vectorworks for AutoCAD users" manual for those working with Vectorworks and Autocad (e.g. when settling on a workflow between the two programs) or those switching to Vectorworks from AutoCAD.

This could make it for those considering purchasing VW in addition to AutoCAD or switching to VW a bit easier to make the purchase or switch.

It wouldn't be the first time when an AutoCAD user takes a glance at VW and then dismisses it because of not understanding some of the basic philosophy/concepts of VW.

Absolutely. In a lot of ways, i see this as inevitable. In prior years (more than a decade ago) the primary influx of users were coming from pen and paper and a lot of the questions we get were how to scan in images, trace efficiently and then go from a 2D pen and paper mindset to a hybrid 2D/3D environment.

Now, pretty much everyone has experience using at least one CAD package, the market is effectively saturated, students don't leave school any more without having been exposed to at least one CAD program and most often that program is AutoCAD, primarily because of its strong market position of course, but the issues stated above with our educational program are certainly not making it any easier on us. Having a set of tutorials geared towards the transition from ACAD to Vectorworks is needed if we want to continue increasing adoption rates.

[Art V]

Absolutely. In a lot of ways, i see this as inevitable. In prior years (more than a decade ago) the primary influx of users were coming from pen and paper and a lot of the questions we get were how to scan in images, trace efficiently and then go from a 2D pen and paper mindset to a hybrid 2D/3D environment.

At the time mid 1990's I already had a few years of AutoCAD experience when I got Minicad 5. The whole thing of papersize, scale etc. felt clumsy to me at the time, now I really like it and would rather drop AutoCAD than VW.

Even today (based on a discussion on another forum) this concept is not always easy to understand for AutoCAD users or basically anyone new to VW because it is quite different from even software like Illustrator etc.

Having a set of tutorials geared towards the transition from ACAD to Vectorworks is needed if we want to continue increasing adoption rates.

Given Autodesk's subscription and cloud strategy and the rumours of potential changes in fall when the activist investors may start axing things (possibly incl. the so-called maintenance subscription which is approx. 40% of the desktop subscription) I think there may be a good opportunity in the near future to attract (former) AutoCAD users. Provided some things are taken care of (esp. import/export of text and dimensions styles in DWG (yes, I can't stop mentioning this ad nauseam as it can be a real showstopper for general drafting in a dwg centric work environment)). Even getting just a few percent of that group would be a substantial increase in VW users I'd guess.