Even if you are on their good side and pay a grand or two a year to get maintenance you are going to likely be treated like a criminal. Lose or destroy that and you are just as screwed, pay again. That was being the registered owner with a fully legit version with the dongle and all. Even if you try to pay the $1500-$2000 per year maintenance, you may well be refused and told no, the license is invalid now and you have to buy another full license at $9500 - and in one case the user was told in no uncertain terms by the salesman that if he didn't pay full price again he was a pirate and they would prosecute him for continuing to use his original copy he had paid for. Remember that there have been incidents recently that bring into doubt whether the $7500-$9500 license you buy today has any guarantee it will be honored when it comes time to update. Unfortunately, their reaction has been very toxic to their core user base - it hurts registered users and doesn't do much if anything to stop the serious piracy in the first place. Lately they seem to have gotten extremely paranoid over people pirating their wares - it has become epidemic particularly in China and India in large numbers of multi-seat environments - and it is very understandable they quite rightly want to and need to put a stop to this.

I love the program, some of the people, and formerly the support. Artcam can cost a lot more than you think, depending on how lucky you are and/or whether you are willing to litigate internationally.

Artcam 2008 software