I was forwarded this information, concerning changes in the licensing scheme
for 2000i-series of Autodesk products, specifically with regard to "floating
licenses" on a network or ADLM environment. If you use ADLM, these changes
will affect you.
Dealer:
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I have discovered an unpublished change is Autodesk's network licensing
policy. I found no publish notification that the policy was changing with
2000i, so I thought I'd inform everyone so you won't have problems with your
customers. I ran into this problem at two client site already and it is
causing problems.
In R14 and A2K, if you have network licenses for plain AutoCAD and a variety
of Desktop products, you got an Auth code for the total number of base
licenses that allowed you to run plain AutoCAD up to that total license
count.
For example if you had 6 plain AutoCAD, 4 Architectural Desktop and 1 Land
Development Desktop, you would get auth codes for 11 base copies of ACAD, 4
for ADT and 1 LDT. This would allow the users to use the version of the
software that was applicable to their work up to the concurrent use of the
base licenses or the desktop products which ever came first. i.e if 10
AutoCAD licenses were in use, only one copy of ADT or LDT could be launched.
Now with 2000i, the base AutoCAD licenses are not pooled. You must use the
desktop product even though you might not want to have the desktop objects
embedded in the DWG. In the above scenario there could only be 6 users of
the plain version of ACAD, other users must open ADT or LDT even though they
do not plan on using any of the desktop features. (or want those base
objects included in the DWG)
Autodesk tech support has confirmed that there has been a change, but they
were caught unaware as well. I could not get an answer as to who made the
decision to change the policy and I could not find any references in the
pre-release documents.
So if you clients use a mixture of Autodesk products and use network
licenses, you may find that they can no longer run as many sessions as they
could with the prior versions. It's better to tell them up front rather than
having your field techs run into the problem.
My CSC rep has suggested that a one time increase in the base license auth
code may be allowed if you ask for it BEFORE registering the product.
Autodesk response:
-----------------------
All,
Let me reply as to what we do in Authcodes. I can't speak about what is
embedded in their DWG files, or what sort of functionality they get from the
codes, but I can tell you how we would code the scenario below so that they
were allowed their full complement of AutoCAD. It is a bit more difficult
than before.
We would code either all three S/N's or just the LDDT and ADT. When we code
the ACD the number of licenses is set to 11 and the code is retrieved. The
ADT is coded for 4 seats, but only the ADT portion of the code is retrieved.
The LDDT is coded for 1 seat, and only the MAP and LDDT codes are retrieved.
All for of the codes are then returned to the customer. When we code just
the ACD at 11 seats, they should be able to run just AutoCAD or have the
option to use the other programs which would occupy an AutoCAD license and
would include the functionality of whatever they were running.
If we are not returning codes in this manner when network calls or e-mails
are processed, then we may have a training issue to address in Toronto. I
am not aware of any change in policy preventing the end user from using the
total number of AutoCAD licenses
Scott Norman
Autodesk
