I recently attended Autodesk OTX which is a wonderful event that highlights all the new features of the annual Autodesk release cycle. I attended a session about licensing, and I was amazed at some of the topics discussed.
I will try and share some of these with you, hopefully it will keep the Software Police away from your door.
Beginning with the actual agreement, which can be found here, if you have a few hours spare to read it. It has a word count of 13861.
If you have taken advantage of the Maintenance to subscription (M2S) switch, there are some rights you have that you may not have known about, called flexible licensing rights:
- Home Use Rights – Install your software on a second machine when working away from your office.
- Global Travel Rights – Use your license when travelling outside of your home country
- Previous Version Rights – use both current and earlier software versions.
As you can see from the above, you have Global Travel Rights, but there is also something called a Territory. This is what the license agreement says about Territories
- 37 “Territory” (a) means the country, countries or jurisdiction(s) specified in the License Identification, or (b) if there is no such License Identification, or no country or jurisdiction is specified in the License Identification, means the country in which Licensee acquires a license to the Autodesk Materials. If the License Identification specifies, or Licensee acquires the Autodesk Materials in, a member country of the European Union or the European Free Trade Association, Territory means all the countries of the European Union and the European Free Trade Association.
I think the highlighted section could be significant for all Symetri customers as many of you work in many different countries.
Basic Compliancy Rules
If you follow these, you should not have any problems
- Each license needs to be purchased in territory where the license will be registered. 1
- Licenses registered to a holding, cannot be used in Eligible Subsidiaries without extraterritorial rights
- Stand-alone perpetual license installation may not be over installed compared to the number of seats of a product.
- Subscription users may not share their user login.
- Previous versions are only available for active Maintenance plan and Subscription contracts
1 ) a member country of the European Union or the European Free Trade Association, Territory means all the countries of the European Union and the European Free Trade Association.
Trial Software
Here is the official wording about using the Autodesk software as a trial.
- Licensee may Install a copy of the specific release of the Licensed Materials designated in the applicable License Identification on one (1) Computer
(LSA, Exhibit B, section 8)
What does this actually mean? If you have installed a trial version of Inventor on one machine in your company, legally you should not install another trial of the same product anywhere within your organisation.
Other Useful information
I suspect that many of you have now used the Autodesk Account page, which is at www.manage.autodesk.com here is basically your one stop shop for everything Autodesk (depending on your access rights)
You can;
- Download the current and previous versions of your software
- Find any updates to your products, (this can also be done from your Autodesk Desktop App)
- Locate your serial number
- See how many cloud credits you have.
What else do you need to know?
- Your Autodesk ID, must not be shared
- No generic email addresses should be used i.e CAD@ACME.COM
- If you are using a single user subscription license, your computer must be connected to the internet at least every 30 days
If you require any further information regarding Autodesk License Compliance then please get in touch.
Author
Craig Snell
Craig has been with Symetri for over 20 years, starting his career as an AutoCAD trainer. He has a lot of experience with the Autodesk manufacturing portfolio and has used Inventor since its inception.
Craig’s philosophy to life is “every day is a school day” and loves getting others involved with learning. Now he manages the Training & Support for the Product Design & Lifecycle side of the business, helping customers with Training Needs Analysis as well as providing an escalation route for our customers with support.
