ARCHITECTURE AND engineering software developer Autodesk has announced it will give its computer-aided design (CAD) software free to unemployed professionals as part of a scheme it says will support the industry through tough times.

Autodesk is pitching the deal as a way of helping unemployed design professionals to gain skills that will put them back to work. “Everyone has been touched by the economic downturn,” said Steve Blum, senior vice-president of Autodesk’s Americas sales.

“The Autodesk Assistance Programme is a fast-tracked way for our customers to improve their productivity and competitiveness during this challenging and volatile time,” he said.

The scheme is currently available in North America and is due to debut in Europe within four to six months. Autodesk’s move to offer free 13-month software licences to unemployed design professionals comes shortly after competitor SolidWorks announced its similar SolidWorks Engineering Stimulus Package.

Both firms have long offered free, long-term licences to students and staff at universities, but have now extended the offer to architects and engineers affected by the industry’s woes.

Like others in the sector, Autodesk is feeling the downturn in development. The firm announced in late March that it planned to add to previous cuts by slashing up to $150 million (€113 million) from its operating expenses. The company’s stock is currently trading at around $18, having peaked at $50.99 in mid-2007.

Newly qualified architects are facing tough times ahead. Dermot Geoghegan, who runs an architectural practice in Carlow, says prospects are bleak: “No more than a week ago a chap who studied architectural technology and did his Part One at Queen’s University in Belfast came looking for paid work-experience. He was a perfect candidate, incredibly employable from my point of view a year or two ago – and I couldn’t give him adequate paid work experience.”

Mr Geoghegan said free software will help, but that it would not solve the problem, and that it also makes clear the profiteering in the industry: “Continuing education is expensive, so I can see the logic in seeding young building professionals with the technology, but it just shows that they charge preposterous amounts of money for their software in the first place.

“We have several unused licences in our office,” said Mr Geoghegan.

The expense of professional software has long led to students and young aspiring professionals using unlicensed “pirate” software, said Tom Royal, deputy editor of ComputerActive magazine: “Any figures you will ever get are unreliable – there are people who could buy a copy but don’t want to, and there are people who can’t afford it. Whether or not that is a good-enough moral argument is another question,” he said.

Autodesk, Mr Royal added, faces a potential problem if unemployed architects and engineers find work after getting a free licence: “There are huge questions over how this assistance programme can be managed.”