WARNING - Beware of Industry Collections

[Darren J. Young]

Before you move to an Industry Collection (which are very price lucrative) especially if you use multiple products concurrently....

Autodesk is claiming you can only run 2 products concurrently for the same user on the same system.

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/insta...g/td-p/7250896
https://knowledge.autodesk.com/searc...Licensing.html


This means to run AutoCAD, CADmep and Navis and/or Revit, you need 2 collections. How do you assign 2 stand alone collections to a single user? You can't. Need a stand alone Navis which is now tied to a user who already has access via a collection. Network scenario is similar. I can't get a subscription network Navis to float to the occasional user that needs multiple products, they need a second collection license.

If you're running network licenses, you can't even buy the extra Navis Manage Network on subscription, they only network them now in a collection.

In the MEP construction world, it's common to have AutoCAD, CADmep (runs in AutoCAD) and Navis running. Even Revit now with the addition of Fabrication parts. That's 2 collection licenses per user for any MEP contractor.

Checked with 3 separate resellers who I know and trust and understand licensing, this was never communicated to them.

Check with several Autodesk insiders I know well and they were all unaware too.

Even if this isn't a "hard" technical limit rather a "soft" contract language only limit, the fact remains, once you go to subscription they can change the rules anytime. Maybe they start enforcing it like. C4R had a convenient "oops" that allows access without licenses which "magically" got fixed a little while ago leaving many users out of their products till they coughed up the funds.

Maybe the restriction isn't "technically" enforced and later you find yourself in a license audit and you now have to pony of some $ because you're our of compliance with licensing contract language. If you look up the Licensing Audit folks from Autodesk on LinkedIn, those that provide details about their position, it's clearly about revenue.

Or maybe down the road, when the economy is bad, and revenue is low because people stop renewing subscriptions, maybe you can then use any product you want from a collection but only 1 at a time and you get up-charged for other concurrent products or have to but additional licenses.

Back in the day, it was cheaper to go to a Revit MEP suite than stay on AutoCAD...until renewal which was then higher. Want to go back? Pay a downgrade fee.It was a deferred price increase disguised as getting more for less.

Wasn't that long ago they no longer sold the Revit MEP Suite and tried to get those grandfathered in to pay to upgrade to a design suite during a promotion "before it's too late and you're forced to pay full price" only to turn around and uplift all customers to a design suite for free 6 months later. One of my former employers they tried to take for $300k this way until I got wind of it and intervened. Again, trying to pass off as a "promotion and savings" what was really a waste of money.

Never...ever trust Autodesk when it comes to sales/pricing even when the price is lower. Your reseller is typically honest but really doesn't know..they sell what they are told to. Every single licensing "crisis" over the last 2 decades was created and orchestrated by Autodesk for the "simplification and benefit" of customers.

Even the mad rush to buy Perpetuals "while you can" was heavily promoted by Autodesk knowing full well they'd just mark up the price of maintenance subscription down the road to force people to subscription. They collected a lot of $, and people will still move to subscription because it will be cheaper....until the other option disappears organically. Sorry, your perpetual Navis Manage you can keep running but we don't make it any longer. We now have "Navis Quantum" which is subscription only.


There's a lot to like about Subscriptions and/or Collections. I'd love to streamline all our licensing into network Collections. But they aren't for everybody or every scenario. Understand the details before you make a decision. It's not just about price, it's about price, value and these hidden little gems like 2 product concurrent limit that don't show up in the Autodesk FAQ's about collections or the reseller's web sites. Unless you specifically search for "concurrent usage" regarding industry collections or browse to the a forum post, you won't see them.

[s.borello]

I just tested this. I opened Navis RVT & AutoCAD MEP and was able to work in all 3 at the same time.

[rkmcswain]

I just tested this. I opened Navis RVT & AutoCAD MEP and was able to work in all 3 at the same time.

As @dyoung30 said "Maybe the restriction isn't "technically" enforced and later you find yourself in a license audit...."

It's probably not a technical limitation, but a licensing limitation.

[dgorsman]

I would have a hard time seeing a user *actively* using three simultaneously (as opposed to "just holding it open until I get to it"). I can understand having a design application like an AutoCAD vertical open on one monitor and a Simulate or Manage session on the other. Plus running vanilla AutoCAD and a vertical of the same version simultaneously is just asking for problems.

[BlackBox]

... Plus running vanilla AutoCAD and a vertical of the same version simultaneously is just asking for problems.

Really? Can you tell me more about this?

I've been doing this often, particularly when I have something to export back to R14 for some of our consultants - Civil 3D Export to AutoCAD only goes back to 2000, so after I preemptively explode all MLeaders (C3D Export doesn't do this at all for 2009 & older exports), I subsequently need to open the resultant drawing in vanilla AutoCAD, maybe do some cleanup, and save back to R14 (otherwise I could open in current version + WBLOCK back to R14), before sending it off.

That said, I've also had - we'll call it 'untimely' - fatal errors in Civil 3D, and not in a way that I could ever identify as a result of running vanilla AutoCAD (sometimes it's still open, others it's been closed) - now I'm curious to know if this (what you said) is why?

Cheers

[dgorsman]

Check your shortcuts to see if the same EXE is being used with different arguments. If you have a completely separate install with different ACAD.EXE's and registry entries for each, then it's OK. Otherwise it's calling different profiles but still sharing some of the common registry entries with the usual "last one in/out wins" rules.

[BlackBox]

Check your shortcuts to see if the same EXE is being used with different arguments. If you have a completely separate install with different ACAD.EXE's and registry entries for each, then it's OK. Otherwise it's calling different profiles but still sharing some of the common registry entries with the usual "last one in/out wins" rules.

Correct; that is how it installs by default (shared Acad.exe, different Profiles)... How is that asking for problems though?

[dgorsman]

Gah. Sorry about the delay BB. Every time I get started on something somebody else drops by with something else that needs doing. Had to start spooling things off, otherwise approaching stack overflow...

You, not much of a problem - you know what you're doing.

Others, not so much. There's a number of registry-stored settings which aren't associated with a profile (i.e. outside of the HKCU\Software\Autodesk\AutoCAD\R___\ACAD____\Profiles registry location), such as the default scales list. Not all customizations (LISP/ARX/DLL/etc.) check for what's actually running by profile name or loaded ARX files either; they'll just assume that the AutoCAD session will *always* be Civil3D (or whatever vertical) and load up.

[BlackBox]

Gah. Sorry about the delay BB. Every time I get started on something somebody else drops by with something else that needs doing. Had to start spooling things off, otherwise approaching stack overflow...

No worries; For you, I've got all the time you need.

You, not much of a problem - you know what you're doing.

Others, not so much. There's a number of registry-stored settings which aren't associated with a profile (i.e. outside of the HKCU\Software\Autodesk\AutoCAD\R___\ACAD____\Profiles registry location), such as the default scales list. Not all customizations (LISP/ARX/DLL/etc.) check for what's actually running by profile name or loaded ARX files either; they'll just assume that the AutoCAD session will *always* be Civil3D (or whatever vertical) and load up.

Well that's kind of you to say; I'm a consummate student... or as many of the folks who are a couple of decades older than I see it... the kid perpetually asking 'Why? Yeah, but why?' Haha

In recording some Camtasia clips this afternoon for some twitter posts, I actually found my first instance of where opening another instance messed something up in my production session - Autopublish settings, of all things! Haha Went to Save a sheet drawing (which produces PDF normally), and sure as $#!t, there pops up a DWFx file instead.

So there, I've learned something - technically I learned something else about RK's uses of screen rel-estate earlier too, but still - daily task achieved!


Cheers