Tuesday, August 16, 2011

AutoCAD 2012 for Mac Licensing and Programming

AutoCAD 2012 for Mac software includes product activation in the authorization process. The process verifies that the serial number is valid and that the software has been activated only on eligible computers. The product activation technology allows an employee to install the software on a second computer owned by the employee’s company, provided it is for use away from the employee’s usual work location, the software is used only by that employee and no other, and only one of the two copies of the software is ever in use at any one time.

AutoCAD 2012 for Mac can be run via a network license. You can run “mixed networks”, with both AutoCAD 2012 and AutoCAD 2012 for Mac products sharing licenses. Flexera’s FlexNet manager is the licensing system used.

Customers with licenses of AutoCAD 2012 can now activate AutoCAD 2012 for Mac with the same license number and activation code. Customers with licenses of Design Suites that contain AutoCAD 2012 can also activate AutoCAD 2012 for Mac with the same license number and activation code.

Most LISP routines that work in AutoCAD 2012 will run without modification in AutoCAD 2012 for Mac. LISP routines that are dependent upon DCL or COM interfaces such as VLA or VLAX are not supported in AutoCAD 2012 for Mac. Existing ObjectARX applications will require some effort on the behalf of the developer to work in AutoCAD for Mac. At a minimum, ObjectARX applications need to be recompiled for Mac OS X. The API (application programming interface) libraries used by those applications, and the availability of those libraries on Mac OS X, will give some indication of the modification necessary for the application to work in AutoCAD 2012 for Mac. For example, the ObjectARX sample applications compile without modification. Conversely, an application making multiple win32 system calls will need to be modified.

AutoCAD 2012 customizations cannot be directly migrated to AutoCAD 2012 for Mac. However, AutoCAD 2012 for Mac uses a subset of the AutoCAD 2012 cui/cuix XML schema to define the user interface. The values are interpreted slightly differently (for example, ribbon panels become workflow groups) but they are very similar. AutoCAD 2012 for Mac supports Menu and Workflow customization; however, constructs like Profiles and Workspaces are not supported in AutoCAD 2012 for Mac.

AutoCAD LT 2012 for Mac and AutoCAD 2012 for Mac

Network licenses can be reported on with JTB FlexReport.

1 comment:

  1. Reinardt BronkhorstSeptember 07, 2011

    Remember that the second installation, or home user license, is only applicable to subscription users.

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