Without A Net

Online License Transfer with AutoCAD for Mac

Since the release of AutoCAD 2011 for Mac, I have received a few questions about whether it is possible to do a stand-alone license transfer from one AutoCAD for Mac installation to another, similar to how you can do it on a Windows-based PC.

Online license transfer is not officially supported in the first release of AutoCAD 2011 for Mac and there is no obvious mechanism for doing this, such as a License Transfer Utility icon. That said, the underlying functionality does exist and it can be done using Terminal.

The following solution provides a script that you can use to do a license transfer to/from AutoCAD 2011 for Mac and explains the process:

2011: How to transfer a stand-alone license in AutoCAD for Mac

Note that this is a temporary work-around for this release and the implementation for doing a license transfer will likely change if it becomes officially supported in a future release.

Of course, all the usual restrictions apply: you must have Internet connectivity; you can only transfer licenses between the same product, version and serial number; etc.

If you have general questions about online license transfer you can refer to the following resources:

Online License Transfer FAQ

Online License Transfer in Autodesk 2010 Products

Package Feature Code Version Number

Occasionally I get asked about the number that follows the adskflex statement in an Autodesk license file:

PACKAGE 64300ACD_F adskflex 3.000 COMPONENTS="85536ACD_2011_0F \ …

INCREMENT 64300ACD_F adskflex 3.000 permanent 2 \ …

INCREMENT PLIST adskflex 3.000 permanent 1 \ …

This question usually comes up when someone notices that the number in the license file changed from one release to the next and they are concerned that it somehow affects their licensing.

The most important thing to know about that number is that you don't need to know anything about that number.  The value of that number does not affect your ability to use a network licensed Autodesk product, nor does it correspond to any particular version of FLEXnet.  The value of that number may vary from one product license to another but, again, you don't need to worry about it.

Autodesk uses that number internally to identify the version of a products package feature code.  The package feature code for a product is the same for every release, e.g., AutoCAD always has a package feature code of 64300ACD_F, and the feature code version number helps identify the corresponding release year.  For example: package licenses didn't exist prior to the 2009 releases so the package feature code version was 1.000 for AutoCAD 2009, 2.000 for AutoCAD 2010, and 3.000 for AutoCAD 2011.

Whenever a product gets a package license for the first time, it will show a version of 1.000.  For instance, the first release of a product like Algor Simulation 2010 will show a version of 1.000 because that is the first time the product was available as a package license:

PACKAGE 85523ALGSIM_F adskflex 1.000 COMPONENTS=85505ALGSIM_2010_0F \

Hopefully that explanation will help put those questions to rest.  Let me reiterate that this is an internal-use number and, as such, we could continue to use it or choose to stop using it and it won't affect your product licensing in the slightest.