Assign products from AEC collections

[Anonymous]

Hi,

At this moment I am setting up our Autodesk manage environment and made the named users. But I’m somewhat questioning myself if i’m doing it the right way. So, I thought let’s ask some stupid questions 😉

We have BD suites and a couple of AEC collections, when i'm assigning the collections to my colleagues it looks like I can assign the complete collection to a user but it’s also possible to assign just one product from the collection to one user.

Since our architect uses Formit I did assign this to the architect but he doesn’t use Revit from the collection so I thought I would assign this to one of the modelers who use Revit but don't use Formit. Just making smart usage of the collection I thought. But it seems that when I assign just one product of the collection to a user all the other products can't be used for another user.

I think this is autodesks purpose, I need to buy 2 collections, I kind of understand.

But what is my benefit for using the collections, with the building design suite the result was the same (buy 2 suites) but when I assigned the one suite to a user, I am done, even the installation was easier, now every product must be installed separately.

In short:

Are the collections made for assigning different products to different users?

Is there a way to install multiple products from one collection in one go?

Am I using the collections correctly, because I don’t see the benefits of this new collection setup for me at this point, except that you get more software for a better price than the suites 😉

Thanx for the answers,

Wijnand

[Mark.Lancaster · Accepted solution]

@Anonymous

Welcome to the world of collections.. 

1.  A single license of collection can only be assigned to a given user.  You are unable to assign individual products of the collection to different users.

2.  There is no single download/deployment method for the entire collection.  It was designed like that because most customers will not use every application that is there.   You must do this for each application that needs to be installed.

Hope that helps..  Also use the Autodesk Virtual Agent method to download each application that you need and thus gives you the ability to create a deployment from that download.   Just remember, serial # that you use is based on the collection serial #, but the product key used is based on the given application and not the product key assigned to the collection. 

[dgorsman]

In addition to Marks points, here's a few more.

Lets say you have someone running multiple products from one collection at the same time; call it Revit 2017 and Navisworks Manage 2017 (BIM manager at work).  That user will only pull one Collection license not two.  That gets a little more complicated if a user runs different versions at the same time, such as Revit 2016 and Manage 2017, it will try to pull *two* collection licenses.

You should be able to "share" software between users with a network license provided only one is using that particular Collection license at a time.  That requires a bit of work scheduling, much as with the non-Suite/Collection licenses if you only had one for the expensive product (Manage) and multiples for the working product (Revit).

[Anonymous]

Hi Mark,

Thanx for the quick reaction, answers 1 and 2 a bit as expected.. but I had to ask 😉

But with more information come more questions, although I am not sure if this is the correct part of the community..

Your hint about the virtual agent and deployments makes me curious. I’ve seen the deployments mentioned before but I never found out how to do that. Is there somewhere on the autodesk sites a walk thru or something how to do this?

And downloading the software through the virtual agent, are the files different when I am downloading them from the autodesk manage site? Necessary for the deployment or something?

As said in the beginning of the post I am setting up our manage part and users for the first time, I’ve read the ‘subscription eBook’ for this. Before we used to get the software on the usb stick, the same serial for all seats, fill this in at the start of the installation and go.

At this moment we have multiple contracts and multiple ‘types’ of revit (and autocad etc); the good old BDS premium usb, BDS premium subscriptions and AEC subscriptions and it became a bit of a mess which I’m trying to get in line.

Also, when we are busy, we buy an additional subscription, with a different serial which I have to change in the pc for the users and when I don’t have the time… it becomes the mess it is 😉

I hoped that assigning one of the different revit’s (difference in product key AEC revit and BDS revit) to a user ID makes sure that it doesn’t matter on which pc the user starts up revit, when we use the option sign in via user ID revit will always work, no matter which version is installed on that pc. So I can install a revit version without using the serial and product key (preferably on all pcs the same deployment).

Is this realistic? Or am I wishing something what the manage and users environment is not supposed to do? I am still not really sure 😉

Perhaps I need to use the network license, mentioned above but that seems to make things even more complicated.

[Mark.Lancaster]

@Anonymous

There is a differences between the Autodesk Virtual Agent and your Autodesk Account.

With Autodesk Account unless you change certain things, most time you are presented with the Install Now option.  This option is downloading and installing the application all at the same time.  There is no media that is placed on your machine like having a USB thumb drive.  The problem with the Install Now option.. It has about a 20% success of rate of installing correctly and it does not provide an option to create a deployment.  The other 2 options..  Download now (Download Manager) and Browser download also don't work well..  Although they act like the Virtual Agent they fail too.  The Download Manager sometimes works, or times it doesn't.  Or it gets stuck 1/2 way through.  The Browser download works but depending on your browser interface, sometimes it won't allow you to download all the necessary parts.  The Autodesk Virtual Agent has separate links to each part of that given product.  Not saying the Virtual Agent is the king of downloads but you have a higher success rate of 90 to 95% that it will work.  Unless the product is not in the Virtual Agent (like Simulation Products), then you should always use the Virtual Agent to download and install your product.

Now with the 2017 products, serial # and product key is not required until you launch the application after you installed it.   Now I haven't created any deployments for collection suites and etc..  But I have heard you don't need to enter the information if you don't want to but others have stated you do need to enter a serial # and product key  to continue with the creation of the deployment.   One final thing..  Activation for term base licensing is through the named account, so the installation can occur on many machines but the assigned named account can only be used once to activate the product, meaning the same named account can't be used on a 2nd machine if another machine is using that account as an activation.  Hope that helps.

Update:  Sorry forgot to provide info about creating deployments:

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/customer-service/network-license-administration/network-deployment/overview-deployments/best-practices-for-creating-deployment

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/You-want-to-know-how-to-create-a-Deployment-of-2017-software.html

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/search-result/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2016/ENU/Autodesk-NetworkAdmin/files/GUID-F46A4A5C-51F8-49AA-BF53-EBF2FDA532B9-htm.html