However, this is not always true.

Sometimes user just open their application and use for ten minutes. After he finished, he just left and don’t close their application. The license is still checked out to this computer, and can’t be used by the others.

On busy day, there will be a good chance many users from different department use the licenses. It might be one department use most of the licenses and other department just get a couple of licenses.

You may also want to limit licenses that can be accessed by users, not opening AutoCAD with Product Design Suite for example. This can happen in mixed product environment, Autodesk use cascading license. It’s a good concept, but it can be a disaster if we don’t manage it properly.

There are many possibilities that can make things go wrong if we don’t control network license usage.

If you’re the one who are responsible for managing license, then you can have many complaints about controlling available licenses.

© Stéphane Bidouze – Fotolia.com

You can set timeout, reserve license for important users, set maximum number of licenses for a group, and many more by using option file. It can optimize license usage. If your company has mixed Autodesk products licenses, then you need to seriously consider setting this up.

If you are interested to learn more about Autodesk option file, read this white paper from Autodesk: http://usa.autodesk.com/getdoc/id=TS1055247

If you want to see details of Autodesk network licensing configuration, see the complete guide here: http://usa.autodesk.com/getdoc/id=TS1076366

© Stéphane Bidouze – Fotolia.com

Up and Ready covers many aspects in software installation, licensing, deployment, and related troubleshooting tips.

Look at some of these articles on the blog:

1. Create AutoCAD 2012 deployment using profile.
2. Illegal server host name for network licensing.
3. General error codes in Autodesk products installation.
4. And also something quite basic like how getting license online.

Try to calculate 750-693. You may see it returns incorrect value. I got 56. There are some more incorrect results.
Yesterday, VMichl notify me that this issue has been fixed in AutoCAD 2010 update 1.
Snipped from readme:

The following defects have been fixed:
(One of them is:)
QUICKCALC
Calculations performed by the QUICKCALC command may be incorrect.

If you have the same problem, download the update 1 here. Install it, and see if it’s fixed.

Later another customer have problem with their Inventor 2010. It was Norton Internet Security that cause this. This is an old issue, since Inventor 11. But it seems it’s not fixed yet. But the solution is not that difficult: uninstall and reinstall Norton.

If you use 3Ds Max, you may also have problem when Symantec End Point Protection is installed. 3Ds Max will not load at all. See how you can fix this issue here.

In my curiosity, I tried to find other issue related to Norton applications. Well, it seems a lot of them cause issues with Autodesk products. You can try to search using keyword ‘norton’ in Autodesk knowledge base. Here is what I found.

I know some antivirus can be conflicted with Autodesk products, not only Norton. But seeing that result is kind of scare me.

Last week, I had troubleshoot inquiry from my company customer (I work for an AutoCAD reseller) After he’s doing some system upgrades, then suddenly his AutoCAD always freeze when he tried to create a new file, or using save as command. He use AutoCAD LT 2008. He’s been using it for 2 years without a problem.

Well, I think this is pretty simple, if after doing some changes to your system you have a problem, then it must be something with it that cause this problem. I try to get as many information as I can from him, but he refuses and ask me to come and see what’s wrong with his computer.

Well, think about it. I know it’s not a problem with AutoCAD at all. Of course your AutoCAD freeze, but something else cause it. I’m trying to help him to solve his problem, but he refuse and acting like I’m doing something wrong. I’m trying to hold this request as long as I can, and in fact I’m kinda busy last week. I send him email request asking as many details as he can provide. And tell him, I will come next week, and I need he to do something for me to analyze his problem from my office.

I ask him to try to collect all error messages he see, capture it, and send it to me. I also tell him to send CER whenever it crash. He said, it’s simply freeze and he don’t see anything. Only ‘not responding’ on his title bar.

Next, I ask him to try find out if this a machine specific or not. He said he can’t even create a new file, so I’m pretty sure this is not a file specific. He said that when he installed it on other machine as trial, no difference. The error still occur. AutoCAD still freeze. Now I’m very sure they installed or set something that cause this. I keep digging.

Finally I found out that they’ve just installed Norton 360. I don’t know why they don’t want to say it at the first place. I think it’s very easy to draw a conclusion: he installed Norton 360, then the problem begins. I don’t know why he quickly jump to conclusion: It’s AutoCAD sins! Maybe because he don’t know what his IT guy have done to his PC. Or maybe he tried to get support from Symantec reseller and don’t get one. The bottom line is, Norton 360 run on the background, and what he need (AutoCAD) can’t run.

I did a quick search in Autodesk knowledge base page, and found this issue. He simply need to install a Symantec hotfix, then everything back to normal. It takes 4 days to track this problem! 4 days for troubleshooting something that can be very simple. I know it’s too long. If only he said “I installed Norton 360, and then I had this problem…” it would only take 5 minutes to solve it! I don’t know why he didn’t mention it at the first place. It only cause him to suffer longer.

Have you open Autodesk support page? Just open www.autodesk.com then open link services & support > support and documentation. Or click here.

AutoCAD rely heavily on Microsoft installation. .NET, VB, DirectX, every single one of it can cause error. And of course, it can be a conflict with other application such as antivirus or antispyware. It can also caused by a virus. I found a Windows update can cause fatal error on AutoCAD.

I believe all of the AutoCAD technical guy will be glad to help you. But you need to provide as many details as you can. Don’t be afraid that he will blame you (I think it’s his reason). Rushing to your office not necessarily solve your issue faster. If you hide details, even if he sleepover at your office won’t solve your problem. I prefer to solve it from my desk. Not because I’m too lazy to come, but I can get a lot of resources from my desk. Many of my customer don’t have internet connection on their users PC. So I can’t find a solution on Autodesk knowledge base page while I’m there. My company also Microsoft Gold Partner, and many other products. So if I can’t get a solution, there are many people I can ask. The bottom line is, to get help, you have to help us!

I found this problem when our customer installed firewall on their client workstation. After firewall active, the workstations can’t find the licenses on their server anymore.

To solve this problem is easy. Just allow two ports: 27001 and 2080 so the client and server can communicate through this server. Adskflex daemon by default is using port 27001. And the license service is using port 2080 (CMMIW – I know these two ports are used by license server, but I’m not sure which services are using them). If you use other than Autodesk product, you might want to check which ports are they using. You can also check in your license file, if they are configured to use different ports.

Why We Should Merge Them?

I have this explanation from my colleague that have configured LM Tools for years. He said that all Autodesk product using the same daemon (adskflex). So, if there’s already a service using that daemon, you can’t run separate service using that daemon. To solve this problem, we have to combine them, and run them as one service.

If you have several application licenses managed by LM Tools, combining them is easier to administer. You might want to consider doing this.

Merging Your License File

License file can be edited by using notepad. Open them both and merge them in a master license file. There’s a good example in Autodesk knowledge base on how to merge license file. You can use it if you have more than one product to be managed with LM Tools.

But if you have different applications that not from the same vendor, let’s say you have Unigraphics and Inventor, it’s a little bit different.

Basically, the license file structure is defined like this:

SERVER server_name physical_address
VENDOR your_vendor_name
INCREMENT some_codes
INCREMENT another_codes

Let’s see this example from Autodesk knowledge base page.

SERVER servername 0123456789ab
USE_SERVER
VENDOR adskflex port=2080
INCREMENT 48800ACD_2006_0F adskflex 1.000 permanent 5 \
VENDOR_STRING=nfr:permanent BORROW=4320 SUPERSEDE DUP_GROUP=UH \
ISSUED=01-Sep-2006 SN=123-45678900 SIGN=”06DE F4C2 998E ABD3 \
2413 D3A0 77EB 0CCE 203C 7BEA 73A3 25F5 0A8D EA5E E26D 1C18 \
968B BE2E 966D C293 AEF0 97F5 9776 057F 652C 6050 D904 A755 \
5A35 7909″ SIGN2=”1A49 5DFA 4C92 D6DC BD74 7D15 6B3F 730D A342 \
EEBC C63F 1838 FFBC 2CD8 B6E0 0113 0E3D 540F AE73 C8B4 C90C \
BA1F 049D 9464 0477 8D53 06AD 0992 5B16 3A92″

Here’s the structure if you have license file from a different vendor.

SERVER server_name physical_address
VENDOR your_vendor_name_1
VENDOR your_vendor_name_2
VENDOR your_vendor_name_…
INCREMENT code_from_vendor_1
INCREMENT code_from_vendor_2
INCREMENT code_from_vendor_…

Notes: Server name and physical address must be identical.