Saturday, June 25, 2011

AutoCAD 2011 Not all Previous Version licenses are available after activating an Autodesk Design Suite

Issue

You have purchased and activated one of the Autodesk Design Suites or a product that is also available in an Autodesk Design Suite, e.g., AutoCAD 2011, AutoCAD Architecture 2011, etc.  Later, you purchase and activate a different Autodesk Design Suite and notice that you do not have access to all the licenses you expect for the previous versions of the products that are common between those suites.
Example #1:
You purchased and activated five licenses of Autodesk Design Suite Premium 2011 and, on another day, you purchased and activated two licenses of Autodesk Design Suite Advanced 2011.  Because you are on Subscription and have previous version support, you expect to have access to seven licenses of AutoCAD 2010-2008 (a common product between the two Suites) however only two licenses are available for these product versions.
Example #2:
You purchased and activated five licenses of AutoCAD 2011 and, on another day, you purchased and activated two licenses of Autodesk Design Suite Advanced 2011.  Again, because you are on Subscription, you expect to have access to seven licenses of AutoCAD 2010-2008 (a product that is available in the Suite and as a separately installed product) however only two licenses are available for these product versions.
Note: Previous Version Support is a Subscription benefit that allows you to run the current version of a product plus the three previous versions (if they exist). For more information, see the following:

Solution

There is a known issue when combining Autodesk Design Suite licenses where the license manager will evaluate the previous product versions that are common between an Autodesk Design Suite and a previously installed product or Suite and provides only the number of licenses for the last Suite that was activated.  Using the first example from above, you would have access to all seven licenses of AutoCAD 2011 but only two licenses of AutoCAD 2010-2008.  This is because the Suite with two licenses was added at a later date than the Suite with five licenses.  If both Suites had been activated on the same day, all seven licenses would be available for the previous product versions.
To resolve this issue you need to obtain a new package license file containing all the licenses (old and new) in a single file, issued on the same day. The issue date can be determined by inspecting your license file and looking for the ISSUED= section in each increment.  For example:
PACKAGE 64300ACD_F adskflex 2.000 COMPONENTS="71200ACD_2010_0F \
             57600ACD_2009_0F 54600ACD_2008_0F 51200ACD_2007_0F" \
             OPTIONS=SUITE SUPERSEDE ISSUED=25-May-2010 SIGN="1242 937A \
Please contact Customer Service Assistance to submit a service request for a new, consolidated, package license file.
Note: This issue does not affect the current version of products that are common between the Autodesk Design Suites (or between an Autodesk Design Suite and an installed product that is common to both); it only affects the previous versions of products that are common between the product installations.

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