I agree totally, Keith. Having worked on high end manufacturing/analysis software for many years, and dealt with
the budgets to support it, it is VERY expensive. At one point, my 6 person group had software licenses
which were costing $250K per year, and the IT dept was NOT happy about it, wanted us to "switch to
something cheaper". Fortunately, cooler head prevailed, as there was nothing with comparable capabilities
and we really DID need the high end analysis software. We did start looking at some of the government written
codes from our counterpart agencies, and some of them were pretty good, but the usability at times was
not good, bare bones stuff and cranky to run, limited error messages when it would stop working. We actually
had two complete suites of CAM software, which management kept grousing about $$$!, but our top CAM folks
could show that each one could NOT make some of the parts we needed and only with both could we
make the stuff we were tasked to build.
There are reasons that a lot of "expensive military aerospace stuff" is expensive. LOTS of overhead costs to work
at the top levels in anything. And frequently the designs have really complex shapes and the designers aren't
too interested in costs, just performance.
And a lot of need for more ordinary, straightforward work, too. Staying out of debt and away from markets which
might be more turbulent is always prudent for small businesses. Beside all that.....I think you guys are having fun
doing what you are doing, and if you are doing well enough financially to need a new building, that is great news.
Not everyone gets to enjoy their job and set it up in a way to make it low stress.