Using networked license may look as a good solution if many CAD users in your company don’t use their CAD application from 9-5, or not using it everyday. This will allow you to purchase less licenses than the number of users, because the licenses are floating and can be used by anyone who needs it.
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.
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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
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