When I started installing Autodesk software many moons ago it was touch and go for a lot of them. The days of having to go thorugh 20 – 30 stiffy disks to install AutoCAD made it a prolonged install with the possibility that the second or last disk was corrupt which meant that you had to start over again but also find a disk that was not corrupted.

We moved onto CD’s and with that the possibility of a scratched disk was always hanging over your head like clouds on a cold winters day. As the software grew larger so did the need for a bigger medium to copy the installation files onto.

The DVD was the next medium but once again for an Inventor Suite install you were up to about 6 or 7 DVDs which again, if you had a scratched disk you would have to find a disk that was not corrupted. Luckily in the time of the DVD installs, we had access to external hard drives which allowed us to copy the contents of the disk and then run the install from there.

Next came the USB install. Autodesk brought out these grey 16/32GB Autodesk branded USB sticks which was great as you didnt have to lug around the external drive anymore.

As Internet speeds increased, the great move to download your installs from the Internet started. This was great for the rest of the world but us down here in South Africa were not one of the lucky ones and our go to was still the USB or External to get our installs to our clients.

The way to install was to download the install files. These would typically be between one and seven installer files. You would then have to run the first installer file which would automatically extract the other files form the other zipped files and then copy them to an Autodesk folder situated in the C drive. It would then start the installation process and you were able to run and activate the software.

As Autodesk had so many different types of software bundles eg Product Design Suite Standard, Premium and Ultimate, getting the right installer was also crucial to your success. You could not install an AutoCAD standalone from the Product Design Suite as there was a Product key hard coded into the install files.

Autodesk realised that there was much confusion with all these different suites and so they decided to consolidate all the software in what we have to day which is the Industry Collections. We now have the Product, Design and Manufacturing collection (PDM), the Architecture, Engineering and Construction collection (AEC) and the Media and Entertainment Collection (ME).

When downloading and installing the software we now had the option to download and install at the same time. No more download, then extract and then install. This easier method of installing allowed the user to download only the necessary files and not everything that might be required depending on what you had on your PC, but alas with these types of installs came different types of problems.

When installing Autodesk software there are certain steps that need to be taken as a safeguard for a good install. Autodesk recommends that you switch off you AntiVirus, switch off User Account Control as well as run the software install as an Administrator.

These steps might be simple but depending on the IT setup of the company you are installing on, it might not be an easy setup to switch off the AntiVirus as per the company policy. This usually leads to you installing without switching off the AntiVirus because it has worked before, so why will it not work now?

The issue with this is that depending on your AntiVirus it might block some of the files that are being downloaded and installed and then your software does not run properly as not all the files will have been downloaded to be copied to the correct installation folder path. To combat an issue like this there is still the option to download all the installation files and then install. This negates the issue of not having all the files available for installation.

If you do need to install multiple software packages, you can create a custom install from the Autodesk Account portal. This allows you to create an EXE file which will can be run from the PC’s that you want to install the software from. Once this is done it is a simple case of runing the software and making sure that you are signed in with an Autodesk account that has ben granted access to the relevant software.

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