IT department hates the constant updates in an educational lab

[alexhardie]

I work at a machining school where we rely heavily on Fusion 360.  Our IT department hates Fusion 360 because of the updates.  They have to login remotely and individually update each machine, which only happens every six months to 1 year after lots of pleading from me.  Our students get frustrated because they can't open their designs they did at home on the constantly out-of-date school computers.  Is there any way anyone else has dealt with this?  Can I give the IT department any info to help them out?

[TheCADWhisperer]

---

@alexhardie wrote:

Our students get frustrated because they can't open their designs they did at home on the constantly out-of-date school computers.  Is there any way anyone else has dealt with this? 

I have the same situation - IT generally only re-images our lab computers twice a year.

The way I get around it is make the Fusion 360 Client Downloader*.exe available to my students.

Then at the beginning of each class they simply double click the file to install the latest version of Fusion.

Because we have Deep-Freeze software on our lab computers - we have to do this each class.

Only takes a few minutes (I'm guessing less than 5 minutes.)

Edit: Our labs use Windows 10 OS.  Not sure how this would work in a Mac environment.

@TrippyLighting might be able to comment on Mac environment.

[TrippyLighting]

Unfortunately I am only a single user so I can not comment on lab environments, but I know who can @James.Youmatz 

[TheCADWhisperer]

---

@TrippyLighting wrote:

Unfortunately I am only a single user so I can not comment on lab environments, but I know who can @James.Youmatz 

---

 I thought you might have a tip on forcing Update on Macs.

Hopefully @James.Youmatz finishes his coffee and doughnuts soon and sees this ping.

[alexhardie]

They're windows computers in the lab.  Should I suggest that IT installs the single user version?  What's the point of the lab version of the software?

[alexhardie]

Our lab has Windows computers.  How would this be different than having IT install the single user version of the software?  If they're going to allow the user to do the updates it seems like it would be doing the same thing.  

[TheCADWhisperer]

Forget everything I wrote.

[James.Youmatz]

Hi all,

Few quick things. IT can enable automatic updates via the Advanced Installation Guide (section 6). 

To your point, if single-user install would be faster/easier to manage - then yes there should not be a difference. Only exception will be if those computers have any restrictions on locations the users can access on the Windows Machine. The single user install stores in the C:/user/appdata/local/autodesk directory (and usually appdata can not be saved to unless you have admin permission - and every Windows user would need to install and maintain the updates). The lab install, installs globally to the machine and does not require admin permissions.

Also, based on the comment around out-of-date versions when working from home vs school - I recommend giving the Fusion Team for Academia document a quick read. There are some tips in this doc around how to structure data to try to avoid that situation, as it is prevalent in schools.

[alexhardie]

Hey James,

Thanks for the info.  I sent the document about automating updates to IT, so hopefully that's helpful to them.  The teams for academia is interesting, but I don't see how it helps to open a project on out of date software.  Am I missing something?

-Alex