The End of Perpetual Licenses – Now We Are All on the Same Version By David Cohn The move to a subscription model is a big change for Autodesk users. Let’s break it down to uncover what the end of perpetual licenses means for you. But that has all changed… sort of. As of February 1, Autodesk has stopped selling perpetual licenses for most of its individual desktop software products, such as AutoCAD, Inventor, and Revit. July 31, 2016 marks the final day customers can purchase a perpetual license to most Autodesk Design & Creation Suites. The full list of products affected is available on the Autodesk website. As a user of Autodesk software, you are likely aware that Autodesk is no longer selling perpetual licenses. Instead, Autodesk has switched to licensing its software on a subscription-only basis. But what does this really mean for you? First of all, you have to recognize that you do not actually buy the software—you only purchase a license to use the software. For years, that license granted you the right to continue to use the software for as long as you like. When a new version was released, you might be able to pay an incremental cost to upgrade, or you could skip that release. In the case of Autodesk, many customers also purchased an annual maintenance subscription, which would keep their software up to date. 10 www.cadlearning.com If you already have a perpetual license, nothing changes. You can continue to use your Autodesk software under that license. And if you have a maintenance subscription, nothing will change as long as you stay on that maintenance subscription plan. You will still receive upgrades as long as your maintenance subscription remains active. If you don’t renew your maintenance subscription, you will be able to keep using the software under your existing perpetual license. But, if you then want to upgrade in the future, you will need to purchase the software under the new subscription plan. You can also no longer convert a standalone perpetual license to a shared network license. Want to upgrade your existing AutoCAD perpetual license to a suite? That is called a “cross-grade,” and you can still do that until the end of July. After that date, you will also no longer be able to cross-grade products. And the only way to add