Autodesk plans to fix Raster Design licensing SNAFU

Autodesk plans to fix Raster Design licensing SNAFU

I have been in touch with various people at Autodesk about Raster Design 2010’s failure to work in a mixed standalone/network environment. These people have all been suitably apologetic, they assure me it wasn’t a deliberate move on Autodesk’s part, and that moves are afoot to provide a solution fairly soon. For example:

Our intention was never to cause such inconvenience for our Raster customers with the licensing change. We are currently working on a solution and hope to have more information in the coming weeks.

And:

…we are very aware of the issue currently relating to the co-existence of an AutoCAD SLM and Raster Design NLM. This was not an intentional “change of licensing policy”, but an unfortunate side effect of updating our licensing technology for SLM (stand-alone) seats to be in sync with our NLM seats for all AutoCAD-based products. I can only apologize for this new behavior experienced by customers upgrade to 2010 version products.

We are currently pursuing a couple of options to rectify this situation. We do intend to provide a solution (fix if you will) in the very near term…

The jury is still out about whether this problem affects only Raster Design or is a general problem that prevents a mixed standalone/network environment of AutoCAD and vertical products. If it’s a general problem, it would be an unmitigated disaster for the 2010 product range. I’m getting mixed messages about this from the Autodesk people, but I don’t want to make an issue of that because the people involved are trying to help by providing what information they have as quickly as possible. As soon as I have accurate information available to me I will pass it on.

I know of at least one person who is unable to get a mixed AutoCAD and Revit MEP environment working. If you have tried to get AutoCAD 2010 and another 2010 vertical product working side by side where one is standalone and the other network, please add your experiences to the comments here.

3 Comments

  1. Brian Thomas

    Great news! I’m still waiting to hear from our reseller on a resolution. I’m sure Autodesk didn’t mean to cause a big uproar with their Raster community. I’m sure it will all work out for the best.

  2. Darrell Smith

    I don’t know that this is related, but we are having clients who cannot reclaim a license in Revit fi their machine times out. In other words, on a network license, when they go to lunch or leave their desk long enough for the software to timeout, it checks the license back out for someone else to use. This is normal. The problem is when they return, it should check the license back out and allow them to continue work (unless there are no more licenses); howevever, instead, it will not let you save to central or local. It requires you to close the program completely and start the file up again. If you forget to save before you leave, you may lose work. An SR request has been made with Autodesk already. I can get you the number if you are interested.

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