Re: Anyone have real world prices for PADS and Altium Designer PCB design apps?

<anon@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:vm1fr2pfrcbtnf6u3usi9g565gfr36jmna@xxxxxxxxxx
I was curious about how pricing works in the PCB CAD industry, if
everyone pays list or if discounting off list is common practice.

Generally speaking, the more expensive the product is, the more likelihood
there is that you'll be able to negotitate a discount/better package
price/etc. Speaking very roughly, anything <$1k is probably pretty fixed in
price, anything >$10k has somewhat flexible pricing. Additionally, the more
licenses you have, the more likely you are to be able to negotiate a deal.
For instance: Some packages such as Pulsonix and Protel have free viewers
available, whereas ironically enough more expensive package such as PADS
don't. However, if you have at least a small handful of PADS licenses,
usually Mentor will give you a "viewer only" license for the asking.

(In some ways EDA tools seem like hotels... nice, mid-level hotels give you
free amenities like WiFi and breakfast, the most expensive hotels want to
nickle and dime you for every last little thing...)

As you'd expect, there's usually more pricing flexibility when a company is
coming to the end of its fiscal quarter and the salesguys are trying to meet
their quotas or qualify for bonuses.

It's
beginning to sound like high end CAD systems have both high initial
purchase prices and high annual maintenance fees.

Annual maintenance fees are typically 10-20% of the purchsae price. Companies
differ in how much support they'll provide to those out of maintenance...
Mentor won't let you do much of *anything* (no access to their knowledge base,
no access to service packs, etc.). This "no downloads of anything, even if
it's just a patch to fix a BUG in the software we ALREADY sold you" approach
unfortunately seems to be getting more common -- Pulsonix just adopted it with
their newest release, 4.5.

---Joel


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