V4 upgrade policy

[Rhodan]

I've heard a nasty bit of news. V4 is on the edge of being released and I've just purchased Rhino (waiting for shipping). Apparently, if you buy Rhino 3 the day before V4 is released, you have to pay the full upgrade price to get V4.

I can understand paying the difference in price between 3 and 4 (if there is any) but making someone who just purchased the software pay a full upgrade price smacks of greed to me and I'm seriously reconsidering my purchase. Nothing has shipped yet so I can still cancel.

Has anyone heard anything about this?

[chmillman]

There are unfortunately no free upgrades offered by McNeel. Basically because the last time they did that, it was an accounting nightmare, and caused a lot of problems.

There are, however, a number of special offers from McNeel to dealers, but it's up to the individual dealers how they set up their price structure and what they will charge the customer for upgrades.

If you have just bought V3 and you didn't get advised by your dealer that V4 is on the way and didn't get some kind of reasonable offer from them, you might try to at least bargain for more before canceling. Some of it will depend on how much of a discount your dealer has already given you, some are selling at rock-bottom prices with very little markup.

There are deals out there if you look, I know at least one dealer in the EU that is offering free upgrades to V4 if you buy V3 now and he is absorbing the price difference himself (and has been for months). Since October I have been offering all new customers the possibility to order V4 now at the future price (it will be somewhat more expensive than V3), and I will ship them V3 immediately plus the upgrade to V4 when it arrives. I am absorbing the loss as well. But in the EU, most people are selling at or near full recommended price (as I am), in the US, the whole price structure is different. --ch

[Rhodan]

I already cancelled. The dealer is going to talk to them about the upgrade policy and see what the deal is. For now I'm going to plan on holding off until 4 is out but still play with other demos. Might find a different CAD program that I like.

So far I'm finding Rhino a mixed bag. Lots of great features but boolean operations are a pain. I realize this package uses surfaces and its not really a solid modeller but it just seems that it shouldn't be such an ordeal to get fillets to work with multiple faces or boolean operations to work though a fillet.

Then again, those truly smooth curves are nice!

[Robert Schutz]

You should know that the list price of Rhino 4.0 will be higher than Rhino 3.0 and the upgrade price's will be higher also. Price's will vary based on country and dealer.

I think the best way to go is to buy Rhino 3.0 with a Rhino 4.0 pre-order upgrade bundle. Most Rhino dealers offer this bundle. You get Rhino 3.0 now and the upgrade when Rhino 4.0 ships.