Licensing for makerspace

[lee]

We operate a Makerspace called The Manufactory in Cincinnati, Ohio USA. We would like to be able to teach our members how to use commercial grade CAD software such as Autodesk Inventor. We are not an accredited or licensed as an educational instutition but education is a very large part of what we offer here. We could easily be considered a "Training Facility".  We have a very nice computer classroom setup with 13 workstations that were built for CAD work.  Outright purchasing of licenses would be cost prohibitive and impractical since we would most likely only offer CAD classes a few times a month, the rest of the time they would sit idle. We have many members that are professional engineers and use professional applications on a daily basis. Many of them have have personal licenses as well. We would like to use them as a resource to teach the uninitiated the advantages of using quality software as part of the design and build process that our members follow.

What are our options for obtaining licenses?

[TravisNave]

You're not an educational institution, so educational licensing is out.  Regardless of your purpose, you'd have to buy commercial licensing.  Your best bet may be to purchase network licenses and have a few more available onhand that you can use from your pool during training times.  You wouldn't likely have to buy 13 extra seats in this way, since they'd only be for a short period of time.  You might be able to find that sweet spot of how many seats you can get away with using at any given time. 

Alternately, you can try the rental program and get the seats you need for the time periods that you need. 

http://www.autodesk.com/store/rental-licences

[DarrenP]

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@lee wrote:

We operate a Makerspace called The Manufactory in Cincinnati, Ohio USA. We would like to be able to teach our members how to use commercial grade CAD software such as Autodesk Inventor. We are not an accredited or licensed as an educational instutition but education is a very large part of what we offer here. We could easily be considered a "Training Facility".  We have a very nice computer classroom setup with 13 workstations that were built for CAD work.  Outright purchasing of licenses would be cost prohibitive and impractical since we would most likely only offer CAD classes a few times a month, the rest of the time they would sit idle. We have many members that are professional engineers and use professional applications on a daily basis. Many of them have have personal licenses as well. We would like to use them as a resource to teach the uninitiated the advantages of using quality software as part of the design and build process that our members follow.

What are our options for obtaining licenses?

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you may want to look at becoming an Autodesk ATC

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=14238528