FUD

When Greg Milliken was writing the piece on CADKEY and Evan Yares was selling AutoCAD 20 years ago, I was a 11 year old who probably hadn’t been even introduced to geometry. So if nothing has changed since then it means that it never will.

The general idea is that FUD (Fear Uncertainity Doubt) is used by big companies to stamp out smaller competition that has a better product. I like the way Alibre is responding though. Almost all CAD software vendors have some sort of a comparison chart which shows how their software outshines the competition. But Alibre has taken it to another level. I was searching for some technical information at the Alibre web site today when I came across this page. There is an Excel spreadsheet called Total Cost of Ownership Calculator that attempts to tell AutoCAD, Inventor and SolidWorks users how much money they are wasting. The spreadsheet badly need to be updated though. They are still stuck with AutoCAD 2005, SolidWorks 2004 and Inventor 8.

Alibre and it’s competition both agree that Alibre Design is cheap, although the interpretation of cheap may be different. But who said fighting FUD was easy?