AutoCAD won't get a license from network

One morning you fire up your AutoCAD and it tells you it can't obtain a license from the network. What happened?

Usually this occurs when the server machine has been restarted. Automatic updates from Windows, power outages or someone just plain turning off the machine could be the culprit.
Here's what to do:

1. On the server go to Start-All Programs-Autodesk-Network License Manager-LMTools

2. Go to the Server Status tab and press the 'Perform Status Enquiry' button. This will give you a readout telling you whether there are errors. If there are errors...

3. Go to the Start/Stop/Reread tab and press the buttons in the following order; Stop Server then Start Server.

4. Go Back to the Server status tab and press the 'Perform Status Enquiry' button. This will give you a readout telling you whether licenses are available and how many.

Cascading Licensing in 2007 and Revit Series 9

This applies to network versions only.

When the AutoCAD license pool is exhausted the Revit Series (which includes AutoCAD) licenses will be used. This is automatically written into the .lic file as the 'plist increment'. You will need to download the latest build of Revit for this to work. In a distributed model each servers licenses will be exhausted completely before going to the next server.

Distributed Licensing

When installing you can choose a single server, distributed servers or redundant. For a business with multiple server locations 'distributed' is the way to go. This will allow users across the business to access the entire license pool.

Note that each server must be individually authorized.

Here's what you do at each machine after installing to add or remove server locations. (If it's already there then it did it automatically when installing.)

1. In Control Panel, double-click Performance and Maintenance.
2. Click System.
3. On the Advanced tab, click Environment Variables.
4. Under System Variables, click New.
5. Enter the new environment variable name, ADSKFLEX_LICENSE_FILE.
6. In the Variable Value field, enter an at sign (@) followed by the host name of each license server to which you want to point the client. Use a semicolon (;) to separate each server name or IP address. (This line has to be less than 256 characters.) For example:
   
   @server1;@server2;@server3
   
   
7. Click OK in each dialog box to close all open dialog boxes.