Its enough to make we want to pirate the ******* thing

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E

Exterous

Super Moderator
Jun 20, 2006
20,557
3,728
126
God I fucking hate AutoCAD activations. The slightest issue with licensing is completely fucked beyond reasonability by unhelpful error messages like 'Error' (That is literally all the fuck their online deactivation software says. Fucking 'error'. Hey Fucknuts - your software costs a fuck ton of money. At least get some fucking mouth breather intern to write a goddamn reason down while you ass rape us with your pricing) and piracy paranoia.

Complete lack of support phone numbers? Check.
A chat option that is never available because the agents are never available? Check.
Links that take you to unrelated help areas? Check.
20+ required fields to submit a support ticket? Check.
Needing to have the software installed on the old computer to get one piece of required information and needing to have the software installed on the new computer to get the second required piece of information to activate? Check.

I could have downloaded and installed this 30 times from other sources in the times its taking me to do this legally....
 
M

marincounty

Diamond Member
Nov 16, 2005
3,227
5
76
AutoDesk has a offices a couple of miles from here. There are notorious for hiring and then firing people. My buddy's girlfriend was once the employee of the month, and the next month they laid her off. WTF?
 
Kaido

Kaido

Elite Member & Kitchen Overlord
Feb 14, 2004
50,661
6,704
136
I did an AutoCAD install on a machine tool system a year or two ago. It took 45 minutes on a brand-new computer then failed out at the end. I feel your pain. iirc all I got was the "error" message too.
 
alkemyst

alkemyst

No Lifer
Feb 13, 2001
83,769
19
81
marincounty said:
AutoDesk has a offices a couple of miles from here. There are notorious for hiring and then firing people. My buddy's girlfriend was once the employee of the month, and the next month they laid her off. WTF?
Click to expand...

The video leaked? ;)

I supported AutoDesk/CAD for a top 10 homebuilder for many years...never had these issues.
 
IronWing

IronWing

No Lifer
Jul 20, 2001
72,324
32,850
136
In the DOS days we had to have separate config.sys and autoexec.bat files just for AutoCAD. It never seemed to occur to the company that one would want a computer to work with more than their program.
 
alkemyst

alkemyst

No Lifer
Feb 13, 2001
83,769
19
81
IronWing said:
In the DOS days we had to have separate config.sys and autoexec.bat files just for AutoCAD. It never seemed to occur to the company that one would want a computer to work with more than their program.
Click to expand...

Like SoundBlaster.
 
dud

dud

Diamond Member
Feb 18, 2001
7,635
73
91
IronWing said:
In the DOS days we had to have separate config.sys and autoexec.bat files just for AutoCAD. It never seemed to occur to the company that one would want a computer to work with more than their program.
Click to expand...


Imagine trying to install ACAD on an XT using 12 or more 1.44 MB floppies. Insert, swap, swap, lather rinse repeat many times only for the install to fail on disk 11.

Oh, the 80s!
 
C

cubby1223

Lifer
May 24, 2004
13,518
42
86
IronWing said:
In the DOS days we had to have separate config.sys and autoexec.bat files just for AutoCAD. It never seemed to occur to the company that one would want a computer to work with more than their program.
Click to expand...

A lot of software was quirky like that. Software had a minimum amount of free conventional memory needed. Depending on the hardware, the drivers for the cdrom, sound card, network drivers, all took up memory, and some hardware drivers took up more than others. There were a couple programs out there to load as much of those drivers as possible in the higher memory spaces, and still had to be fine-tuned, some software liked one memory management software, others liked another.

That's why MS wrote the ability to have multiple configurations for config.sys & autoexec.bat into DOS. I had to run with 4 separate startup configurations to choose from for the various games I had on the computer back in those days.
 
purbeast0

purbeast0

No Lifer
Sep 13, 2001
53,538
6,365
126
"its" ...

i actually worked for a CAD company making a commercial product, and while i never worked on the installer, it always seemed to be such a pain in the ass for the guys to create. i don't understand why it's so difficult.

and the activation/licensing stuff was pretty intense. again, i never worked on it, but i do remember it was pretty difficult for the guys to implement. it has to be pretty intricate because the software is so expensive and a pirated copy can be a lot of "lost" money. granted, as a software dev, i don't think the people pirating are using it for business reasons for the most part. it's just people using it casually.
 
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norseamd

norseamd

Lifer
Dec 13, 2013
13,990
180
106
ever any problems with dassault systems or parametric technology corporation?
 
Phoenix86

Phoenix86

Lifer
May 21, 2003
14,644
10
81
I manage several acad workstations, activation is never that big an issue...?

There's a number on the activation screen for activation errors, everything else should come from your reseller (support). Speaking of, CALL THEM. They are the assholes making mad commission off you, make them work. :p
 
PliotronX

PliotronX

Diamond Member
Oct 17, 1999
8,883
107
106
Oh just wait'll you deal with businesses in the energy sector in remote locations at the mercy of satellite and horrible wireless and marginal DSL lines and the latency timing out Autodesk's Flexnet activation servers... cracked copies >>> legit always, less resources and time consumed by BS issues.

Also in a class about Inventor with licensing on a perseat basis for 20 units at any given time split between two class rooms of forty students... lollerskates when the professor's Inventor BSoD's and upon restart one of the students has to close out Inventor so the projector can show the class how to do shit. Awesome stuff.
 
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OutHouse

OutHouse

Lifer
Jun 5, 2000
36,410
616
126
Exterous said:
God I fucking hate AutoCAD activations. The slightest issue with licensing is completely fucked beyond reasonability by unhelpful error messages like 'Error' (That is literally all the fuck their online deactivation software says. Fucking 'error'. Hey Fucknuts - your software costs a fuck ton of money. At least get some fucking mouth breather intern to write a goddamn reason down while you ass rape us with your pricing) and piracy paranoia.

Complete lack of support phone numbers? Check.
A chat option that is never available because the agents are never available? Check.
Links that take you to unrelated help areas? Check.
20+ required fields to submit a support ticket? Check.
Needing to have the software installed on the old computer to get one piece of required information and needing to have the software installed on the new computer to get the second required piece of information to activate? Check.

I could have downloaded and installed this 30 times from other sources in the times its taking me to do this legally....
Click to expand...

SAP Crystal 4 for Enterprise is hidisouly expensive and took 4 months for our sales rep to give me the license keys... 350K per year does indeed by some shitty ass service.
 
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Imp

Imp

Lifer
Feb 8, 2000
18,828
184
106
lulz... Our work license server for AutoCAD was out for a few days last month. No one got shit done.
 
Jeff7

Jeff7

Lifer
Jan 4, 2001
41,596
19
81
"You're saying that it would cost your company hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in labor to switch your models to a competitor's CAD package?

Come on, tell us you love us. And at least take the time to learn to grovel properly next time."


Won't this all become even more fun as more software moves to a yearly subscription model?




PTC (Pro/Engineer) has a lot of their support on lockdown, even the user forums. Forums, FAQs, and anything that isn't part of a sales pitch. If you're not fully paid up every year, you're locked out. At least the software doesn't have a built-in killswitch.
 
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