What if I told you that you could stop sending models off to the simulation goon you have locked away in the basement server room. What if you are the simulation goon and would rather be cooking lentils while running a simulation instead of cooking your motherboard? Well, the time has come where you can release your mesh from the bondage of itty-bitty-gigabitties of processing power and ship it off to the cloud FOR UNLIMITED MESH MASHING. Autodesk announced the availability of Autodesk Simulation 360 and after asking for more details, we received pricing for the new cloud service.
Simulation 360 Pricing
Autodesk is aiming Simulation 360 at everyone (not just the analysts)–Designers, Engineers and manufacturers–anyone who want to offload analysis tasks. The process runs through a thin client software installation on your desktop that allows you to import/create geometry, define material properties, apply loads and boundary conditions, and query or view results. All the meshing and solving is done in the cloud. It’s available as a standalone offering which, looky here, means you do not need to be on Autodesk subscription to get access to it. Here’s a breakdown on the pricing:
- Autodesk Simulation 360: includes Mechanical and CFD capabilities, 120 jobs for $3,600/12 months.
- Autodesk Simulation 360 Unlimited: includes Mechanical and CFD capabilities, for unlimited jobs for $7,200/12 months.
- Autodesk Simulation 360 Ultimate: includes Mechanical, CFDD, and Moldflow capabilities, 120 jobs for $10,000/12 months.
- Cloud Capacity Pack: 10 jobs (approximately 1 month of usage for $100).
I’m excited to see this and how it pushes other apps (and software companies) to the cloud. Based on the amount of render jobs for the price, the cost is reasonable as well. However, this is for one piece of software. While the attraction is offloading processes, I’d like to see the entire Autodesk suite available via the cloud. If what Adobe with their ‘Creative Cloud’ is any indication of where software delivery is headed, it shouldn’t be too far off. Adobe’s Creative Cloud is the first experience I’ve had with cloud apps. At $29.99/month for CS customers (regularly $49.95/month) you get access to ALL of the Adobe Master Collection, 20GB of storage and more. Imagine that for ALL of the Autodesk products. Yeah. What is your experience with using cloud services? Is Autodesk Simulation 360 an attractive product to offload your simulation? or do they need to add more?
