Preventing the use of a Suite License for running AutoCAD

[Anonymous]

In previous versions of Building Design Suite, Factory Design Suite, etc. AutoCAD had an individual feature code within the suite license.  We placed all of the suite licenses on one license server and plain AutoCAD licenses on other license servers.  This enabled us to prohibit the use of a suite license for running AutoCAD, thereby preserving the suite licenses for those who needed to run Revit, Inventor, etc.  (We have a large pool of AutoCAD licenses for those who need to run AutoCAD).

On the license server offering suite licenses we used exclude statements such as >>EXCLUDE 86295ACD_2015_0F INTERNET *.*.*.*<< to prevent the use of suite licenses for AutoCAD.  As AutoCAD is no longer a separate feature code in suites this no longer works.  One work around is to use the HOST_GROUP command and include only the users who should need to access Revit, Inventor, C3D, etc however this would be a large undertaking as this list would be constantly changing - plus this still allows those individuals to use the licenses for AutoCAD also.

At this point we are going to place the server name offering the suite licenses last on the ADSKFLEX_LICENSE_FILE list of distributed servers so that it lessens the chances of inadvertent AutoCAD license usage - Does anyone have any other ideas on how we could prevent the use of suite licenses for AutoCAD?

Thanks;

Nick

[TravisNave · Accepted solution]

Do it the other way and only do an INCLUDE on those users who can only use vanilla AutoCAD.  Only those users will be able to pull from that pool and no others will be able to.  That will force a Revit user to pull from the Revit suite, or any other available suite that is not vanilla.  INCLUDE implicitely excludes anyone who is not in the group.  I prefer it over EXCLUDE because it is more powerful and your AutoCAD list is probably smaller than your suite users. 

[Anonymous]

Travis:

Thank you for responding to my post.  What we have resorted to for now is an INCLUDE list that we maintain with the users of the suite products (in our case this number is far less than the number of AutoCAD users).  Not a perfect solution but it will work for now.

I believe we will also look at using the redundant license server scheme as opposed to the distributed scheme.

Thanks again,

Nick

[TravisNave]

Sounds like you're on the right track.

As for the license scheme, I would personally and professionally recommend that you do not choose the redundant model as it does not work as you would think it does by the name.