Network Licensing activation/registration question...

[Anonymous]

Hello, I have recently started a new job here with my local school district. Our highschool has a fairly large CAD lab. Unfortunatly I havent been lucky enough to ever take a cad class, so im as green as it gets here. They are currently running a version of Autocad LT this school year. I have been assigned the task of creating and installing the deployment of autocad architecture 2009 for next year. I know that they are setup with 1 network license server that dishs out the licenses to each workstation. They are also using some kind of a shared profile so that when each student logs on, they all have the same layouts and options. Because I am so new to all this autocad software, I would like to create a test license server and possibly try a test deployment to a single machine to make sure I know how this is all gonna work before doing this to the real, currently working cad lab. I am worried about registering or activating the serial number on my test server....will I run into any trouble when i go to uninstall all my test installs? I would hate to screw something up with the available licenses. Lastly, I have a couple questions regarding migration of old settings. My original plan was to reimage the entire lab and license server to start fresh and clean for next year, then I thought about importing the settings from the current install....Now I am thinking that I will image all the workstations in the cad lab, and then just install the new autocad software on the server so it can grab settings from the current install without reimaging it. Does it sound like I am on the right track, or way off? I apologize for being so long winded....this is all new to me. Thanks so much for any help and advice.

[TravisNave]

The convenience of a network license manager is that you don't have to make a test server to see if it is going to work and get all worried about screwing up the registration of the license. What you simply need to do is get your license manager installed correctly and add your Architecture 2009 seats to it. Once done, you don't have to worry about it anymore. It will hand out and return all available licenses on its own without any problems. This leaves you to test as many deployments of networked Architecture that you want, because you are not activating each individual test machine. The license will just be consumed on launch, and returned on close. There's nothing more to it than that.



As for imaging, this is very convenient also for network installs. This is because you can set up one machine and get it perfect, then use imaging software to blast it to other machines (be it Ghost or Acronis, etc.) Again, licensing is not an issue because the license exists on the server and not the client.



This is exactly what I do for my training labs. Makes it easy.



If you need more details, don't be afraid to ask.



Good Luck!

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the response! That eliminates alot of my worries, as far as setting up the license server, because we already have a version of autocad running with the network license manager running on the server, would I still need to install the license manager? or just some how as you mentioned add the architecture 2009 seats to it?

[Anonymous]

You will want to update the license management
software to the latest version, and yes, you can just append the license
file you get to the existing. If you just have LT though, then that's not using
a network licensing scheme. Do you also have other Autodesk
softwares?

On the server, look for a program called LMTOOLS
and explore the current settings before upgrading it. There's also a lot of doc
on this on the software DVD.

--
Sam Hochberg
Inventor Certified Expert
Not too bad at
AutoCAD either
 
  

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<spowell01> wrote in message
href="news:6163176@discussion.autodesk.com">news:6163176@discussion.autodesk.com...

Thanks
for the response! That eliminates alot of my worries, as far as setting up the
license server, because we already have a version of autocad running with the
network license manager running on the server, would I still need to install
the license manager? or just some how as you mentioned add the architecture
2009 seats to it?

[Anonymous]

Thanks for that response as well Sam.....actually my name is Sam also! I would head in right now and start playing around with the server, but school is still in session, and the cad teacher doesent want anyone in there playing around with stuff while hes teaching his class. I'm just going to have to wait another month or two until school gets out then I will have free run of the cad lab. I'm sure with everyones help here I wont have any major trouble getting this lab set up for next school year.

[TravisNave]

Once you get the hang of it, it's a breeze.