Well, what a price! What a surprise!!
In june I had been tried several times to get a quote from SquareOne to buy ECOTECT v.5.5 with educational discount and I did not get any answer. Then, I have been traveling for a month and now with Autodesk ECOTECT v5.6 released, the price for one copy increased almost 500%.
With this, we can assume that Autodesk prices policy is an absurd!!! The job made by Andrew Marsh to develop ECOTECT and others softwares to help and assist students and architects in building design (focusing in small business too), as well, trying to bring them to building simulation knowledge field in order to improve health and sustainability in buildings may face a downstream with those new prices. And, they will also suffer from software piracy, as others expensive Autodesk products.
Another issue is that Autodesk will sell ECOTECT with SunTool and WeatherTool together. That became a problem because now we have no choice to use others free software available in the market that do the same work. Why can´t we choose just one of them? In relation to WeatherTool, the problem is worst because it uses a specific thermal zone in its psychometric chart (There are several thermal zones adjusted to specific climates!). Why should I pay for something that do not work for me? Rethink this, please.
I hope so that Autodesk, at least, adjust ECOTECT price with educational discount to become as accessible as was before.
Best regards,
Oliveira.
I agree: the prices policy is an absurd!
I'm Franco from Italy and I was evaluating the Demo version of Ecotect in order to buy a license for my energey consultant company. The price of the previous version (before Autodesk) was "normal": around 1000€. Today I wanted to buy the software and... surprise! The price is more than 1700€. Ok, they give me SolarTool and WeatherTool but why am I forced to buy them?
Conclusion: I will not buy the software anymore.
I hope Autodesk will change its prices policy.
FREE CLIMATE ANALYSIS SOFTWARE
Hi Oliviera,
Yes tragedy about the pricing.I have already commented but it is great software so there is still value in Ecotect.Plus the R and D and service will vastly improve with better resources.!!! You suggested there was other free climate analysis and Sun shading diagnostic software.
Can you advise what they are?
john brodie
VIM Sustainability
Construction and sustainability management
FREE CLIMATE ANALYSIS SOFTWARE
Hi John, for the sun shading analysis I'm evaluating Google Sketchup which is not free for professional use but it is very easy to use and cheap (less than 400$). With a plug-in (free) you can even create a model for Energy plus (also free) which is the same engine used by Ecotect. I have not tested it yet but in some forums they say that it works.
I agree
I dont see why you should be forced to buy all three, I was going to get a copy, but the price increase is ridiculous.
I can now get all three - full adobe cs4 and sketchup pro and lightwave design tools for the same price as ecotect now.
As a training architect, I use it as a useful reference tool to see if i'm close to suitable energy levels for building regs and yes its pretty good software, but the increase is absurd. There should possibly be a sort of ecotect 'light' version at a fraction of the price with just basic tools. If you want a hot copy go onto piratebay and v5.5 is there with a crack that works. I very rarely use downloaded software as I disagree with it, but the increase is enough to turn me away from it. Pure greed
what about educational copy?
Hi,
As far as i know, one of my colleague did bought Ecotect (some time back)some old version for 50£ and now its more than 1500£. We are not using this software for any commercail purpose. we need this for R and D and educational purpose.
But now it seems to be difficult. Hope Autodesk will do something for this. I think they should cut down the prize as in near future there will be more and more people using Ecotect. But if they will not change the prizes, in future very less people will use Ecotect.
Regards,
amey