Question re. full AutoCAD license

[kippax]

I work for a wholly owned UK subsidiary of a German company.

If they have more licenses than current users, would I be able to use one of them.

Or doesn't it work like that ?

[f700es]

Ask who ever is in charge about it. If they say so then yes.

[dbroada]

It is possible but unlikely. The European T&Cs are a lot less flexible than those in the USA.

[kippax]

Cheers for the answers...

I really need to get a handle on how the licensing thing works.

I'm stuck in the middle here of some office politics and it's wrecking my working methods and I need to front up the relevant parties.

Basically the UK Director seems to be refusing to raise this issue with the Germans for reasons unknown, other than maybe an unwillingness to ask for their help. He now expects me to simply re-download the trial version every month, which is a right royal pain and I'm not sure that is even possible.

I'm reluctant to go over his head and approach the German management directly for fear of being seen to undermine him.

My intention is to confront them both simultaneously, but before I do I need to know what I'm talking about.

Any more thoughts ?

[ReMark]

Reloading the trial version every month is not going to work unless you start getting creative which would probably be more hassle than what it is worth.

Is this 2D or 3D work?

[dbroada]

I've never tried it but I would be very surprised if downloading the trial every month would work.

The only way to establish if you can use one of the spare German licences is by going through your AutoDesk agent and they sometimes get it wrong. We were on subscription and NEEDED to use an older version of AutoCAD (to match some other software) and we were assured by our agent that it would not be a problem. We loaded the old version of AutoCAD and it refused to register. We had never loaded that version and therefore never registered it so couldn't install it now. It was eventually sorted out but it wasn't easy. I had to fill in a 40 page (not exagerating) form detailing why I wanted to install out of date software.

Again, it is too complicated to go by what somebody on a forum tells you. You MUST talk to somebody with links to AutoDesk.

[kippax]

Reloading the trial version every month is not going to work unless you start getting creative which would probably be more hassle than what it is worth.

Is this 2D or 3D work?

It's really simple 2D work, though I know that some of our clients use a 3D non-AutoDESK package.

[ReMark]

Could you use one the free AutoCAD clones instead?

[Tyke]

Does the German Company have German language or English language versions of AutoCAD. I'm not sure if you can transfer licences from different language versions of AutoCAD. I transfer licences on a permanet basis from one computer to a new computer without any hassle at all, but that's all internal in my company. I don't know where Autodesk is for the UK, but in Germany they are in Munich and if you are going to try and deal with them then I wish you the best of luck.

My company is in a group of companies and Autodesk charged us €250 to transfer a licence from another company in the group to us and then it wasn't an easy task. Initially they told us that it wasn't possible. But as Dave said the rules for Europe are different to those in the US.

I would agree with ReMark on the trial version issue. You have to start changing entries in the registry if you want to install a second trial version of the same version of AutoCAD, although you can install different trial versions on the same machine, but why? The cost of doing that repeatedly will soon be more than the cost of a new licence. Make you UK Director aware of the fact that to repeatedly reinstall the trial version you (someone) must, each time before the reinstallation, start changing registry entries and of the dangers of doing that, ask your IT people what they feel on doing that.

[ReMark]

I think there is a way to get around the task of changing entries in the Windows Registry but it would still be a hassle one would have to deal with on a monthly basis until such time the job was completed.