tenaja wrote:Sorry to burst your bubble, but $150 for design & engineering software is definitely FAR from "professional software". More like "not quite penniless hobbyist grade".
Pricing is in my opinion adequate, Simplify3D is priced similar to other low end CAM tools.
I think the problem is more lack of transparency. We have totally upside-down situation with slicer market, the free ones - "works for me, I won't promise nothing" ones - are transparent, you see the design process, what issues are being tackled, what features are planed, both short and long term, while the "for the $$$" (irrelevant how much), with promise of improvements and quality, that's completely opaque, no community interaction what so ever, no worklog, no issue system, with rare and embarrassing releases
What bugs me mostly is, since I am in software development world for over 30 years, and looking at the 3D printing community I see that most of the community is also (at least 50%) from the software development world, we all know that bugs with "repeatable test case" are easier to fix then all other and usually get higher priority. Not having that type of bug solved for 2 years, without any explanation "why it can't be fixed", tells a lot about the team behind the development process. It does not always means the team is bad, just that one making decisions on what is the priority either have way to much on his head (too many bugs -> not a very good product) or too little resources (not enough developers -> hence the question, is this app being developed at all, that's often seen on this and other forums). The message is surely not very encouraging.