Software Buyer Guides: Choosing the Right Autodesk Software
Most Autodesk buying mistakes are not about features. They come from buying the bigger product for someone who never uses the difference, buying single products for someone who would have been cheaper on a collection, or choosing a platform that is awkward to leave. These guides take the decisions we are asked about most and work through them the way we would with a client: what each option includes, the arithmetic in relative terms, who should buy which, and what is cheap or expensive to change later. They are written by Modena Technologies, Africa's only Autodesk Platinum Partner and an Autodesk Authorised Training Centre in Cape Town. We sell every option in them at Autodesk's prices, and we would rather you bought the right one than the bigger one, because the wrong one comes back to us at renewal.
Pick the decision you are facing. Each guide stands on its own, and each ends with the same offer: send us who does what and we will recommend a seat mix with the reasoning shown.
Moving from AutoCAD to Revit
What the switch actually involves: whether to make it at all, which Revit to buy, who to train first, the template and content to set up before the first project, and what the move really costs.
Read this if your practice still draws in 2D and clients are starting to ask for models.
Read the transition guide
AEC Collection or individual licences
When the collection pays and when it does not: the one-number test, how to mix collection and single-product seats across a team, and what a three-year term actually buys.
Read this if you are buying Revit, AutoCAD or Civil 3D for more than one person.
Read the collection guide
AutoCAD or AutoCAD LT
LT costs about a quarter of AutoCAD. What it leaves out, who hits those limits and who never will, and how to mix the two across a drawing office.
Read this if anyone on your team draws mainly in 2D.
Read the AutoCAD guide
Fusion or Inventor
Two different products, not two sizes of one. Where each is stronger, the three questions that decide it, and when the Product Design & Manufacturing Collection is the better buy.
Read this if you design and make mechanical products, or program your own CNC machines.
Read the Fusion vs Inventor guideWhat the guides have in common
Three principles run through all of them. Autodesk subscriptions belong to named users, so the decision is made one person at a time and most teams end up with a mix. Prices are given in relative terms, such as "about a quarter of AutoCAD", with links to the product pages for current figures, because Autodesk's price list and the rand both move while the relative positions hold. And every guide says what is cheap or expensive to change later: a seat type can usually be changed at renewal, but a modelling platform cannot always be changed without re-work.
We review the guides every January, and whenever Autodesk changes its price list or renames, adds or retires products. If something in a guide is out of date, or does not match what you see in your own office, tell us.
Choosing the computer as well
Our workstation guides do the same job for hardware: what Revit, Inventor, AutoCAD, Fusion, Civil 3D, Twinmotion, Navisworks and ReCap Pro each need from the processor, memory, graphics card and storage, and which Modena Computers workstation suits which kind of user. Settle the software first; the hardware follows from it.
Ask us which software fits your team See the workstation guides
