Home Use licenses - Do you take advantage of them?

[Blam]

How many of you take advantage of Home Use licensing as part of your subscription benefits? If you are the CAD Admin, do you allow Home Use licensing? If you don't have it, do you wish your admin allowed it?

[Tyke]

We utilize the Home Licences for all of our AutoCAD Subscription licences. I have one and my main CAD operators too. We've done it now for five years and find it extremely useful. It means that people can also work from home when needed. I'm off work sick at the moment, but still have full access to AutoCAD Civil 3d 2011 (soon 2012) and without the Home Licences life would be much more of a chore and not half as comfortable.

 

I see CAD Admin who don't allow it as ostriches with their heads in the sand!!! I see no disadvantages whatsoever, but there are conditions attached (see the article in the Subscription Center)

[Organic]

Do you have a link to the article?

[designerstuart]

never used it - never heard of it til now

[Tyke]

Dink 87522

 

Do you have a link to the article?

 

 

 

The most detailed information is actually in the Subscription Center and is available as a PDF file, unfortunately my copy is in German, so possibly not a lot of use. You can only get at it if you are logged in with your user name and password. A direct link would not work.

 

However, here is a bit of info in point 5: http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=3970195

 

Contact your reseller and get more information from him. Remember its only available to Subscription Accounts.

 

I find the Subscription by far the best way to keep my licences up to date. There are advantages that are only available to Subscription Customers and my reseller offers me further advantages from himself that are also only available to Subscription Customers. We have AutoCAD Civil 3D on a three year Subscription Agreement and because of that I get an additional 10% price reduction. The basic Subscription price is €750 / licence / year, but I only pay €675. Civil 3D costs around €6000 here in Germany, so doing a bit of maths, if I upgrade my software only every 8 years, it still pays to have a Subscription. Because of Client stipulations, we must have the current version of AutoCAD, hence for us Subscription is the only way. The downside of a 3 year Subscription Agreement is that you have to shell out the whole money at the beginning of the Agreement.

[SLW210]

I do not work from home. I am CAD Manager and I see no reason to be working from home.

[tzframpton]

I definitely use it.

[Blam]

I've just started making it available for users. I think it is a worthwhile thing to have available, epecially if they are trying to learn a new veritcal product. It can be too distracting at work to train.

 

Basically, we have users and their Dept Mgr sign a consent form, they return it. Then I request a serial number from Autodesk in the Subscription Center as the Contract Admin. When I get the serial number I send it to the user with a disc or have another tech burn a disc for them.

 

The consent form outlines what they can and can't use it for. The consent form we have basically repeats and breaks downs what is in the Ancillary Service Description for Home Use:

http://www.symetri.co.uk/downloads/subscription-home-use.pdf

 

I wrote up a consent form and passed it by our legal department. It is full of "You will NOT..You will NOT.... You will NOT". The spirit of the home use license is you won't try to "double up" your licenses by putting it on any computer anywhere near your place of work. It's for your home computer only and should be generally used for learning purposes. It can be used for project work in a pinch, but we try to warn users against doing that. In our consent form it warns about the dangers of viruses, overwriting files, etc. We also specify that they can't use it for their own business enterprises, etc.

 

My boss was a little leary of it at first, but I convinced him it would be worth it as a training benefit. I can see both side of the argument. Some CAD admins might think it would not be worth the trouble or security risks. And I can apreciate the philosophy of leaving work at work and not letting it intrude at home. But I think the learning benefits outweigh the risks if you cover yourself legally.

[Lazer]

We can use the home licence and I have taken advantage of a few times in the past, not had to do it for about a year now as we have a full cad room but back in the day I was on my own I used it often. Like SLW210 I don't like working from home (wife goes mad).

[Tyke]

I use the home licence as a means of getting the job done better. As a general rule I don't work at home, but there are times when it is necessary. Because I don't over due it, the little lady doesn't get her knickers in a twist at all. At work the phones seems to ring all day and there's a constant stream of people coming into my office. It is almost impossible to concentrate for a reasonable period, so I stay at home and do a day or so and get far more done than in a whole week. I'm lucky in that I have an excellent assistant who is more than capable of standing in when I'm not there. But I can also appreciate it's not something that would suit everybody. It's horses for courses.

[Noahma]

We use it with our office as well. It helps to get new stuff done, new templates ect. when office time will not allow. It also gives me something to do at home once my daughter and wife go to bed lol. I usually sit around and just design a home that I would want for a change lol. (a few of the designs have made it into our "try to sell" list.