About Combining Licenses

Explains which network licenses can be combined.

You typically combine network licenses when you purchase new products and want to run them on an existing network. When you purchase and register one or more products, Autodesk issues a license file for those products. If you later purchase other products, Autodesk issues a license file for the new set of products. By combining the two license files, you can run all the products on the same network. When you combine two license files, you append the bottom part of one file (everything after the VENDOR line) to the contents of the other file.

Pay special attention to the issue date in each license file. For example, suppose that two license files with different issue dates have some products in common. In this case, the later versions supersede the versions issued earlier, reducing the number of licenses.

You can safely combine the following:

• Licenses for different Autodesk products, regardless of the version. Example: Revit and Showcase.

Licenses for different versions of the same product. Example: Revit 2015 and Revit 2016.

Do not attempt to combine the following:

• Multiple licenses for the same product and version, issued on different dates. For example, suppose that you have 12 AutoCAD 2016 licenses and later purchase 8 more licenses for the same product. The 8 later ones supersede all the earlier ones, and you have access to only 8 licenses, not 20.

License files for a package (multiple versions of a product) and for a product included in the package. For example, suppose that you combine a new package license for Building Design Suite 2013 through 2016 with an older single license for Revit 2015. In this case, the Revit suite version supersedes and cancels the older Revit license.

License files for two suites that have products in common and different issue dates. For example, suppose that you combine license files for 2016 package versions of Building Design Suite and Product Design Suite. In this case, you cancel the licenses in one suite for products common to both suites.

Note: If you encounter problems with a complex combination scenario, contact Autodesk Support. Instead of combining the licenses yourself, you can request a new license file that includes all the licenses you want to combine. This new license file has a single issue date for all product licenses, which prevents any of them from superseding earlier licenses.