By Nick Harris
Alongside the release of Autodesk’s 2019 product versions this month, there has been another change to the licencing of Autodesk Collections. Now there is no limit to the number of products that you can run simultaneously on your computer, a change from the maximum of two previously. This change brings the multi-user subscription and single-user subscription experience in line. Collections also differ from the previous perpetual Design Suite behaviour in allowing a user to launch different versions of a product from a Collection whilst only consuming one licence. For example, when launching a Revit 2016 and a Revit 2018 at the same time, using a pool of networked Autodesk Building Design Suite licences, two licences are consumed. Now, with Collections, only one licence is consumed. This is a compelling reason to switch from Suites or even individual products to Collections for budget holders and the IT department. It removes much of the headache of devising complex licencing purchasing and deployment strategies where individual users have differing needs.
When switching to Collections you still have a choice to make between a single-user subscription and a multi-user one. Here are some of the things you need to know.
With a single-user subscription:
- Works like existing single-user subscription offerings
- It uses cloud-based authentication and licensing
- A named user is allocated to the entire Industry Collection not individual products
- A license cannot be assigned to multiple users
- The named user has full access to the desktop and services
- Only the specific named user has access to the cloud services
- There is one serial number for all products in an Industry Collection; each product has a unique product key
- There is a maximum of 30 days of offline use before the product needs to reconnect once with the Autodesk authentication service.
- An Internet connection is required
With a multi-user subscription:
- Works like existing multi-user subscription offerings
- Ability to download and distribute individual products
- An Industry Collection license is indivisible: only one user can access the collection at a time
- Can combine other multi-user licenses with Industry Collection licenses
- A license file must be generated for multi-user Collection
- One serial number for all products; each product has a unique product key
- A named user has full access to the cloud services
- Administrators can assign or deny access to specific cloud services
- Up to three users can be assigned to a cloud service, this is to reduce the management overhead where there are fluid workforces.
- An internet connection is not required