Tuesday, July 1, 2014

Autodesk for Students and Educators

Many software companies provide software solutions for colleges and universities. Having some experience with these licenses I can say some companies "don't get it," charging hundreds of dollars to students for trial versions of software which expire after a year. Autodesk, by comparison, does get it.

3D printing and design, 3D scanning technology, and other DIY fabrication devices require software to generate the files used in fabrication. Colleges and universities, after spending money to acquire fabrication technology are often strapped for cash to obtain necessary software. Often, the software arriving with the technology is good, but not "industry-standard." Faculty want to expose students to current software provided by industry leaders.

Years ago, software companies might provided "low-cost" versions of their software to students for educational use. While "enterprise" licenses might cost tens of thousands of dollar "per seat" (per computer), a student license might run $500-$1,000. Students would scoff at such offering despite the 90% discount from list. Software companies, at the time, didn't really understand that if they simply gave their software to schools to use in teaching, the students would want to use the software after gaining the experience, resulting in a built-in user base.

Most companies are catching on to the idea of using colleges and universities to develop a ready-made user base and are literally giving away software, or are engaging in very generous licensing agreements which reduce the cost of yearly licensing to pennies per seat. Kudos to those companies, by the way.




Autodesk has such an offer to colleges and universities. Autodesk offers colleges and universities the chance to enroll in their Educational Community program. Once enrolled, nearly all of Autodesk'
s software is available to the entire campus community.

Just a sample of Autodesk's Educational Community offering

The Autodesk Educational Community allows disciplines across campus to offer instructional software, teach design and encourage creativity. Autodesk is not paying me for writing this post; over time I have used 3Ds Max, AutoCad, AutoCad Map, SketchBook Express. I know people who use Maya as often as I use my wok (a lot).

If your campus is into design, creativity, fabrication, then see if you already are part of the Educational Community. If not, make some noise and see if you can get your institution signed-up for this great offering by an industry leader in graphic arts and design.

No comments:

Post a Comment

We appreciate comments but to reduce spam and other nonsense, comments are moderated. Please be patient with our moderator so we can ensure quality of discussion. Cheers!