AutoCAD Multi-user (network) Licensing and multiple subscription

[Anonymous]

No Idea why last post marked as Spam and deleted but here goes again:

Apologies if I am asking a question that has already been answered but I have been unable to find clarification. My organisation has been through multiple changes over the years and we have ended up with the following situation:

3 separate subscriptions consisting a total of 7 seats:

Subscription 1 contains 3 seats of Autocad

Subscription 2 contains 1 seat of Autocad

Subscription 3 contains 3 seats of AutoCAD - including specialized toolsets

Each expires at different times through the year and are renewed. My organisation runs a Single Licence Server and the licence file has the details of all subscriptions.

I was led to believe that the server will pool all available licences for the same product so I should have a pool of 7 seats for AutoCAD 2019. I am in the process of creating a network deployment and part of the deployment asks me to enter a serial key as well as product code. Each subscription has it's own unique serial key so my query is that if I enter a serial key from one of my subscriptions and use this deployment on all my machines will they only use the seats available to this particular subscription. I contacted Autodesk telephone support and was assured that when creating my deployment it would only ask for the product code and licence server so would not be tied to a particular key and therefore use the whole pool.

Any help would be appreciated.

[Mark.Lancaster · Accepted solution]

@Anonymous

Welcome to the Autodesk User's Community..

When it comes to perpetual network or multi-user subscription it doesn't matter what serial # you use (under different contracts) when you create a deployment.  Just pick one for your deployment..  When the software starts up it will grab one of the contract serial #s in your license file and activate it.  Hope that helps.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the swift response Mark, that's exactly what I needed to hear.

Would you be able to tell me if I can ringfence a set of licences so they can only be used by a certain set of installations? As well as the 3 subscriptions I also have 2 seats on maintenance for a different area, being paid for out of a different budget. Is it possible to dictate which machines can access these licences?

[Mark.Lancaster · Accepted solution]

@Anonymous

To control who gets what license, you'll need to create a network license option file.  In the option file you can assign (well actually reserve) a license based on a given user name or computer name.

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/customer-service/network-license-administration/managing-network-licenses/controlling-license-usage/control-network-license-access-using-options-file

However since the introduction of suites (since 2012 product release) and Collections, the syntax in that linked article is not really properly formatted.   You should be doing something like this to properly work with Suite and Collection applications.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Mark, just what I needed.