Product Design Suite and Industy Collection combined license file?

[tglass]

We currently have 19 PDSU network licenses. We will be looking to buy additional licenses later this year, and will apparently be forced to buy the Product Design Collection. Our reseller, while admittedly not entirely sure how this will work, seems to indicate we will not be able to create a single pool of licenses to share.

Does this mean we will need two license servers? And two deployments pointing at each server? Is there no way to combine PDSU and IC network licenses so that the end user clicking on AutoCAD/Inventor gets a license from whichever is available?

I don't want to have to create two groups of engineers with each group having a unique deployment that points to each license server, that seems dumb. Especially since we'll likely have something like 19 PDSUs and only 2-3 PDCs.

Please help me understand AutoDesk's ultimate wisdom in this matter...

TIA

[felice.s · Accepted solution]

Hi @tglass,

If you have 19 network licenses of PDSU, they are by definition perpetual licenses. You are correct in that you cannot purchase additional perpetual seats of PDSU after July 31 (but you can do so until then if you choose.) But let's say that after July 31, you require additional software licenses and you would like to purchase the PD collection.  You will have a choice to either purchase single-user (standalone, dedicated) or multi-user (networked, shareable).

Assuming that you go with addition licenses of multi-user PD collection, then a few things to note:

1. Your existing 19 perpetual network licenses and your new term-based subscription multi-user licences CAN co-exist on your existing license server to create a single pool of shareable network licenses. 
2. After you purchase the multi-user licenses of the PD collection, you can use the Generate Network License feature in Autodesk Account to generate a license snippet for the new subscription licenses and add this license snippet to your existing license server. 
3. End users will access licenses from the shared pool and will not need to know whether they have pulled a perpetual license or a subscription license. 
4. If you choose to not renew the subscription licenses, they will simply expire, effectively reducing the number of shareable licences in the pool. 
5. Additionally, when/if you purchase the subscription PD collection licenses, note that you can choose to align the end date of  this new subscription contract with the end date of your maintenance plan contract (the one with the 19 perpetual licenses.)  This way, you have just one contract end-date to maintain (although two contracts... one for the subscription licenses and one for the perpetual maintenance plan licenses). 

Hope this helps. 

Regards,
Felice

[tglass]

That's exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!

[felice.s]

You're welcome, @tglass.  I also found this short AKN article on the topic that specifies the "cascade" order - ie, which license is pulled first when you combine subscription licenses and perpetual licences on a single server. 

Regards,
Felice