Building Design Suite License Cascading

[FT398]

We have multiple licenses of Building Design Suite Premium running from network licenses and alongside these we also have multiple network licenses of Simulate 2013. When we run Simulate that has been installed as part of the Design Suite, it will more often than not license itself using one of the standard Simulate licenses rather than the Design Suite licenses. However, if all our Simulate licenses are in use by people running the BDS version the users with the standard Simulate installs cannot get a license as the cascading doesn't work the other way around.

We have found that if we install Simulate (the non-BDS version) using the BDS product key then the cascading will work both ways which would thus fix our problem but this would mean we need to uninstall/reinstall every seat which would be a bit of a pain so is there a way to modify an existing installation to change the product key from 506E1 to 765E1?

If not, is there any means of getting a license file which allows Simulate 2013 to license itself with a BDS license? Looking at the products that the BDS license will activate, it seems somewhat ad-hoc as to the nature of what it will and won't do - even with the inclusion of a product I don't think ever existed, Building Design Suite Premium 2011.

85946BDSPRM_2013_0F Autodesk Building Design Suite Premium 2013

85787BDSPRM_2012_0F Autodesk Building Design Suite Premium 2012

85652BDSPRM_2011_0F Autodesk Building Design Suite Premium 2011

85837NAVSIM_2012_0F Autodesk Navisworks Simulate 2012

85601NAVSIM_2011_0F Autodesk Navisworks Simulate 2011

71500NAVSIM_2010_0F Autodesk Navisworks Simulate 2010

85793REVSYP_2012_0F AutoCAD Revit MEP Suite 2012

85624REVSYP_2011_0F AutoCAD Revit MEP Suite 2011

73100REVSYP_2010_0F AutoCAD Revit MEP Suite 2010

85792REVSU_2012_0F AutoCAD Revit Structure Suite 2012

85594REVSU_2011_0F AutoCAD Revit Structure Suite 2011

74000REVSU_2010_0F AutoCAD Revit Structure Suite 2010

85541RVTMPB_2011_0F Autodesk Revit MEP-B 2011

82400RVTMPB_2010_0F Autodesk Revit MEP-B 2010

85614RVTMPJ_2011_0F Autodesk Revit MEP 2011

73800RVTMPJ_2010_0F Autodesk Revit MEP 2010

85543REVITST_2011_0F Autodesk Revit Structure 2011

74100REVIT_2010_0F Autodesk Revit Structure 2010

85536ACD_2011_0F AutoCAD 2011

71200ACD_2010_0F AutoCAD 2010

85561ARCHDESK_2011_0F AutoCAD Architecture 2011

72200ARCHDESK_2010_0F AutoCAD Architecture 2010

85595STRDET_2011_0F AutoCAD Structural Detailing 2011

82200STRDET_2010_0F AutoCAD Structural Detailing 2010

85562BLDSYS_2011_0F AutoCAD MEP 2011

73000BLDSYS_2010_0F AutoCAD MEP 2010

85503MAXDES_2011_0F Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2011

70000MAXDES_2010_0F Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2010

85615ALSK_2011_0F Autodesk Alias Sketch 2011

85607SHOWCASE_2011_0F Autodesk Showcase

[TravisNave]

This is by design.  Cascading will always take the cheapest available license first.  In this case, you should probably install your highest suite and let the licensing take care of itself.  Alternately, you can use an Options file to split the licenses on who gets what suite.  I have a KB listed in my signature line for that. 

[FT398]

Having spoken to both Autodesk and my reseller, I am confident that the behaviour we are witnessing is NOT by design. There are apparent problems when merging license files created on different dates which causes big problems. The BDSP license was modifying the behaviour of other licenses and reducing our overall availability. For now, we have moved our BDSP licenses to a seperate server and left our AutoCAD, Simulate and Revit ones on the original and this has eased things but not resolved them fully.

The issue with cascading is made the more problematic when dealing with the suite licenses. Theoretically these should not be allowed to cascade because if they do, you don't get the benefit of the suite license. If we cascade down to the 'cheapest' license then this could mean we end up taking up individual licenses of AutoCAD, Simulate and Revit whereas if we hada suite license we would use just one license to cover all products. And then there is teh issue that the 'cheaper' products don't cascade upwards so if all our standard licenses are in use on machines that have suites installed, we could end up with a bunch of suite licenses that are unused and inaccessible. The only way to get the system to work in its current state is to have standard users start work before the suite users so that they grab the basic licenses and 'force' the suite people to use the correct licenses.

Maybe it's these problems (which I have since found have been reported to have existed in the 2012 version of the suites too) that is leading the push towards the use of suites in place of 'standalone' products.

[Dazzman]

I would have hoped that your reseller would have told you that you needed to regenerate all of you license files again so they all had the same date before you tried to combine them, then hopefully using an options file would allow you to achieve the license allocation per system to get around the cascading issue.

I know it’s not ideal but the issue about the single product and suite product cascading into the correct license first came up back in September 2011 and with Travis’s and others help it became apparent that for it to work correctly, as you have found out, the single products need to be installed with the suite key for them to work correctly.

Unfortunately it seem that the issue still exists in with the 2013 products and as you say is probably why there is a push to move to the suite model of products.

Hopefully someone else can confirm that what 2013 product have the issue as when we had the problem it only seemed to be an issue with AutoCAD 2012 and not ACA 2012.