Well, Solidworks finally blew it with our boss, probably more accurately Solid Solutions but as a reseller they're obviously bound by Solidworks policies.  Going back to day one the company was badly advised on what requirements were needed, they gave him minimum machine specs but quoted for the full-blown versions of the software which require somewhat more power and has cost him to upgrade both the server and our machines a few times over the last 3 years and quite some expense. Since then it's been a catalogue of costs one after the other and (particularly) as he personally doesn't use it he has been more bemoaning the ever increasing costs (I can certainly see his argument).

What finally did it was the introduction of Vault standard. A piece of software that is being forced upon us anyway when 2018 comes out and they want a £1,000 to install. We enquired about installing it ourselves to save the cost but they tried to have us sign a disclaimer saying if we hit any problems we'd be completely unsupported in anyway. We would still have software support for Solidworks (which we barely use/need) but absolutely zero support for the vault. The way our boss sees this is he pays enough for support every year as it is. so, the proverbial dummy came out and now we're over on the darkside using Inventor (which I must admit, I'm getting quite impressed by).

The point to this post? Just to say a huge thanks to all the guys and girls on the forum who have helped out when we needed it. It's been a fun three years but as of the end of this month our subscription runs out and it'll be the last time we'll be around. So thanks again for all the help peep's.

Dave B