Tips You Need to Know about Autodesk Licensing

Whether you need help with software installation, usage or diagnosing and solving your technical problems, the Applied Software, Graitec Group support team is ready with telephone and desktop product support to get you back to productive work and keep you going.

ABOUT YOUR AUTODESK ACCOUNT

Autodesk Accounts (manage.autodesk.com) are user-based. You can access your assigned software from your Autodesk Account.

The Contract Manager is the contract owner and the person who manages payments and renewals. They also receive all subscription emails, renewal reminders and invoices.

The Primary Admin manages the users and their access to Autodesk products. There can only be one Primary Admin per team, but the same person can be the Primary Admin for more than one team.

The Secondary Admin is a backup person or an assistant who manages users and their access to Autodesk products. There can be multiple Secondary Admins.

Teams are a way to organize users by departments or offices. A team is created when a contract is created, and the Contract Manager is made the Primary Admin on the team. If a user on a team needs to manage other users, they must be the Primary or a Secondary Admin on that team.

Users manage products and services in their own Autodesk Account. When a user is first added to an Autodesk Account, they will receive an email to set up their account unless they already have one. 

All software purchased by a company is added to a team. These assets may be moved between teams, but this can only be done by the Contract Owner (Contract Manager).

LICENSE COMPONENTS ON YOUR COMPUTER

The Autodesk Desktop Licensing Service (ADLS) and the Autodesk Single Sign On (AdSSO) component are required license components and are installed for versions 2020 and newer of all Autodesk software.

ADLS is found in C:Program Files (x86)Common FilesAutodesk SharedAdskLicensing. As of December 2022, the current version of the ADLS is 13.0.0.8122.

AdSSO is found in C:Program FilesAutodeskAutodesk AdSSO. As of December 2022, the current version of the AdSSO is V13.7.7-2020.7.

Updates for Autodesk license components are presented in the Autodesk Desktop App, or they can be downloaded from your Autodesk Account.

• Installing from the Autodesk Desktop App is more automatic, and the updates are done on the existing install.
• Downloading from the Autodesk account is a more manual process. With this method, it is recommended that you remove the previous version(s) before installing the current version.

If a workstation is using a network license or token-flex license and has updated to the current ADLS, the Network License Manger must be updated to 11.18.

During updates, you may encounter errors caused by corrupt or out-of-date license components, including:

• “Licensing error” – Contact Autodesk Customer Support.
• “License manager is not functioning or is improperly installed.”
• “License checkout timed out. What do you want to do?”

If you run into any of these listed problems, reach out to the Applied Software technical support team for help resolving the issue(s).

CHANGING YOUR INSTALLED LICENSE TYPE

Perpetual Standalone (discontinued)– This license type is activated using a serial number and product key.

Network/Multi-User Subscription (discontinued)– An Autodesk perpetual license with multi-user access allows several users to share access to a pool of product licenses. The Network License Manager (NLM), controls the distribution of licenses to users.

Because Perpetual and Network licenses have been discontinued, both of these installed license types must be changed to Named User Subscription licenses:

• 2018 and 2019 licenses can be changed by changing the value in the LGS.data file located in C:ProgramDataAutodeskCLMLGS
• 2020 through 2023 licenses can be changed by navigating to C:Program Files (x86)Common FilesAutodesk SharedAdskLicensingCurrenthelper and typing the following: AdskLicensingInstHelper change -pk product_key -pv year.0.0.F -lm “”

Named User Subscription – Each user is assigned a license that can’t be shared with another. This license type is activated by logging into the software using your Autodesk Account credentials. You can download and install the software assigned to you on up to three devices, but you can use only one instance of the software at any given time.

Token-Flex Subscription – Autodesk Flex allows occasional users to use tokens to access any product available with Flex for 24 hours at a time. After you purchase Flex tokens, you can assign users and specify which products they can access.

Questions? Check out the Applied Software, Graitec Group FAQs.

---

Applied Software, Graitec Group experts are available to help you with your Autodesk licensing questions and issues. Contact Applied Software when you need to push through a problem and get back to productive work.

---