Licensing for Automation/"Bots" and API Services Alternatives

[compadre38LH4]

I haven't found any specific forums about this, and hopefully this is more appropriate here than in the general Inventor forum. I'm just starting to dig into automation options for a very small team and how Autodesk licensing terms would be applicable. 

As far as I can tell with the named user licensing requirements, it would be a violation of the license terms to purchase a license for a "bot" or a machine to solely run automations, such as with a user sending an excel file to a folder or location, then automation and iLogic turning that into a part and/or drawings and sending it back. Is my understanding correct, assuming that the machine was running automations from multiple users?

My thinking that has got me down this road is that it would provide potential for non-CAD users (such as Sales) to create rather simple files without adding to the Design Team load. As I said it's a small team, and like most small businesses being able to do more without having to proportionally add man-hours is pretty advantageous. Autodesk gets to sell an additional license, these users wouldn't get one regardless since they don't know how to use CAD, but my assumption is Autodesk probably doesn't look at it this way. 

Would this just be a matter of who is sending the data into the flow that would trigger requirements for multiple licenses under the named user model? A seemingly simple way around that to remain in compliance would be to route the flows through a single real person, it pauses for them to click a button, and then all the requests are actually coming from a single person (no real difference than two engineers requesting drawings form a single designer).

I know the alternatives that Autodesk is pushing is the APS and Flex tokens, but since I'm barely starting to consider all this I haven't explored all that yet. More assumptions there, but I'd imagine (with no real evidence) that getting that running and keeping it running would be a much more intensive job. All in all though this may still be the best route.

I'd assume for simple jobs and our volume the cost of this vs the license would be cheaper, but again it would be a matter of time spend maintaining it. My limited experience is that APIs are great, but not exactly hands off (like maybe it could be for simple automations set on a machine using the same Inventor year model for years at a time).

The other issue I could see there would be changes to the terms of that service. For instance, Autodesk decides that too many minor requests are using more resources than their profit warrants, so all flex token usage is rounded up to to 5 minute increments, which could change costs by an order of magnitude overnight.

Has anyone tackled this and have firsthand answers on exactly what Autodesk expects to remain in compliance and best practice to go about it. 

The alternative to all this I'd considered, which I don't think would be particularly advantageous for Autodesk for them to force, would be to use automation tools in conjunction with a free or much cheaper software to run the background processes, and output parts and files in formats that can be easily imported into Inventor, and maybe not all the work is removed from the Design Team, but could conceivably reduce work tasks from 30 minutes to 30 seconds.

Just don't want to run afoul and cause issues, especially if this is going to be a lot of cost and time on the front end that we won't be able to use for the long term and actually get a return on investment for all of it.

If it's all a stupid question please feel free to call me an idiot and go read more, but being polite doesn't cost anything either!

[Curtis_W · Accepted solution]

@compadre38LH4 , we just went through the clarification on this recently.

In that case the solution took customer inputs from a web site, and passed it to at least 2 other internal systems/automations which manipulated the data and handed down a modified input file... and then finally the modified input information was handed to a machine running Inventor.

That solution was deemed out of compliance, because no person directly interacted with the inputs.

In that particular case, the updated solution was to route the inputs into a que, and then send them to Inventor as part of a manual person driven button click, when the orders were approved. With that human interaction, the solution was was permitted.

compadre38LH4  wrote:
"My thinking that has got me down this road is that it would provide potential for non-CAD users (such as Sales) to create rather simple files without adding to the Design Team load."

I think  if the license was issued to your internal "sales engineer" and they were creating the inputs, then you would be in compliance, regardless of whether they knew how to use Inventor. Meaning if you gave them a form and an easy button. They could use the license to run your Inventor automation without worry.

If your outside customers were inputting info into an outward facing website, that was sent to that "sales engineering" machine to be used by your automation, that would not be allowed, unless the your sales team member were doing something to manually approve/release/kick off the automation consuming those inputs (such as clicking your easy button).

This is my understanding of it, but I would reach out to someone Autodesk and confirm all of this, as I might be mistaken.   https://www.autodesk.com/ae/support/account

[Curtis_W]

@CGBenner 

https://www.autodesk.com/ae/support/account

at this link,  the bot ain't bot'n .... the "ask the assistant" button is dead ( Win7 & Chrome)

[CGBenner]

@Curtis_W 

Hi, I see the same thing, but oddly... if you hover over it for a second it lights back up (on my end).  Can you try that and let me know what happens?  In either case I will raise the alarm, just want to have the full story first.  Thanks, CW!

[compadre38LH4]

Sorry for the delay, lost my password. 

Very much appreciate the answer, sounds like someone already had a very similar use case. 

While we hadn’t planned on opening it to customers, that’s an interesting future consideration as well. 

Sounds like the main thing to make sure that it’s staying in compliance is to have a human input, and I assume a license for every human sending the input. Sounds like an easy solution is to route all the automation requests through one person and then can use one license. 

Not the most automated automation, but not a very big bottleneck for a person to have to just click “send” a few times once a day. 

We are still exploring the APIs as well for future scale. A lot of exciting options!