As the Contract Manager or Software Coordinator you have added new users to the Autodesk Subscription Center. Now, you need to manage this list. You will want to make sure that users have received their login details, have logged on to the center and used the facilities available to them: e-Learning, support requests and file downloads.

Users might approach you from time to time to request their profile to be reset because for some reasons, the login details they have no longer works. You may want to delete users that have left the company or moved on to a different position within the company. To do this,

1 - Go to www.autodesk.com/subscriptionlogin

2 - Go to Contract Administration

3 – Choose View/Edit Users

4 – From the list of users, click on Edit User

5 – Update Settings will enable you to make changes to the user’s access rights to e-Learning, Web Support and File Downloads; Delete User will take away the user’s rights to access the Autodesk Subscription Center.

When you first signed up for the Autodesk Subscription program, your company would have named two primary representatives for your subscription. Those two primary contacts are called the Contract Manager and Software Coordinator. Depending whether you are the Contract Manager or Software Coordinator, you will have varying levels of access that I will not go into detail in this post. However both the Contract Manager and Software Coordinator will have the authority to add users to the Autodesk Subscription Center. Once added, those users will be able to follow the e-Learning tutorials, submit support requests and download product upgrades and extensions.

To Add new users:

1 – Log in to www.autodesk.com/subscriptionlogin

2 – Go to Contract Administration

3 – Choose Invite New Users

4 – You can either use the Quick Add Recipient or the Recipient List

i – If you only have a couple of new users to add, use Quick Add Recipient, enter the email address, first name, last name of the person you want to add, click on Add to List, then on Check List. The system will confirm that no errors have been found in the list you have provided.

ii – The Recipient list enables you to paste a large list of names as long as you follow the email, first name, last name format. Click on Check List to ensure that the data is loaded in the system.

5 – Select what you want your user(s) to have access to, be it e-Learning, Web Support and File Downloads.

7 – You can personalise the email to encourage your users to log to the center.

8 – Click on Send

We had our Autodesk Subscription Webinar last week. For those of you who have Autodesk Subscription, your can listen to this Webinar now and find out more about the two online resources you can access when you have an Autodesk Subscription with Excitech.

Please note that even if you don’t have an Autodesk Subscription with Excitech, you will get some valuable information on how to access the Autodesk Subscription Center and where to go to submit a support request, follow e-Learning tutorials, download product upgrades and extensions, add new users to the site, or edit your profile.

Don’t forget to leave your comments! I am eager to find out what you’d like to see featured in the next webinar dedicated to Autodesk Subscription.

As Autodesk product upgrades are finally reaching the last subscription customers in UK, I have received a fair number of calls over the last few weeks from clients who had not received their upgrades because the shipping address on record was incorrect. For those of you who have tried, in vain, to get in touch with Autodesk in order to update your details, there is good news. You can log in to the Autodesk Subscription Centre and update your contact details yourself.

- Log in at www.autodesk.com/subscriptionlogin

- Click on ‘My Profile’ at the top right hand corner of your screen.

- Click on ‘Edit Location’ in ‘Shipping Location’.

- When you have made the necessary changes, click on ‘Submit’.

- Finally, you will need to click on ‘Update Profile’ for the changes to be saved.

Revit Structure subscription customer? Yes? then you can benefit from Revit Extensions, an additional productivity toolset to enhance the features of Revit Structure.

Robot Structural Analysis subscription customer? Yes? then you get to benefit from even more Revit Extension tools as well as Robot Extensions, a productivity toolset to enhance the model generation and post processing capabilities of Robot based in MS Excel.

So here’s the deal.

With the 2010 release of Structural software, Autodesk have linked some of the Revit Extensions to the subscriprion of Robot Structural Analysis, or to give it its manageable, shortened title, RSA.  This is a great benefit to both Revit Structure and RSA users, which offers functionality that none of the 3rd party analysis partners can offer.

It is clear to see that, although Autodesk are keeping an agnostic approach with the analysis partners for Revit Structure, they are starting to offer more benefit for their own solution than for others, delivering a compelling argument for customers to start using both Revit Structure and RSA.

The additional extensions available to RSA customers are highlighted in the screen grab below, but are essentially the Analysis Integrator for RSA, Composite Design, Load Takedown and Reinforcement Design.

We will look at all of these in some additional posts, including Robot Extensions, but will start off with the one that takes my interest most of all and that’s Load Take Down.  For those die hard Robot fans of the past you will know a product that we developed at Robobat called CBS Pro, well this is CBS Pro within Revit Structure.  So now you can analyse your structure in Revit with a view to producing foundations loads sooner in the design process.

More on that to come shortly..

nr

We are holding another Autodesk Subscription Webinar. This is the second webinar of the year; dedicated exclusively to Autodesk Subscription. The first event was really successfully with over 80 attendees.

If you have an Autodesk Subscription, be sure to attend our Autodesk Subscription Webinar on 24 June 2009 from 12:00 to 13:00. You will find out everything you need to know to get the most out of your Autodesk Subscription. We will show you how to access Autodesk Subscription Center, where to go to request ‘Home Use’ or ‘Previous Version’ and submit web support requests. We will explain how you can add new users to the Autodesk Subscription Center so they can follow e-Learning and download product extensions. We will also spend some time reviewing the additional exclusive benefits we offer you if you have an Autodesk Subscription with Excitech. And by the way, if you haven’t got an Autodesk Subscription or have your subscription with another reseller, you can still attend and see what you are missing out on. And lastly, this webinar is free.

To register, just go to: http://www.excitech.co.uk/news/Autodesk_Subscription_Webinar_240609.asp.

Welcome to our blog! I am quite excited at the thought of posting on this new blog. I’ll be writing about what Autodesk gives away as part of the subscription program and what Excitech offers in terms of added benefits to its clients. I also want to share with you my experience on licence management so that you can make the most of what’s on offer. Home Use, Out of Territory rights and Previous Versions will no longer be the best kept secrets in the world.

I want to make sure that as an Autodesk Subscription Holder, you log in to the Autodesk Subscription Center and also on our own Excitech website to follow the e-Learning tutorials, read white papers and view webinars. There is a wealth of information on these 2 online resources that I think would be of great value to users of Autodesk Software.

So, here it is for the first post on Autodesk Subscription. I hope that you can take the time to comment on this blog sometimes. I look forward to speaking with you again soon. - Florence

AutoCAD Structural Detailing has been included with Revit Structure Suite for just over a year now and the latest version, 2010, includes a few gems to help with the creation of complex modelling in Revit Structure. One of the weak points of Revit is the inability to easily position complex steelwork through 3D space other than using plenty of reference planes and a liberal amount of cursing!

Revit Structure 2010 now includes a two way link with ASD which is found on the Add-Ins tab on the ribbon. Yes, you do need to be on subscription for these tools. This tool will enable you to update your Revit Structure model from ASD or send your model to ASD for further detailing.

The first step is to start AutoCAD Structural Detailing 2010 and make sure you are using a Steel Project. The screen should look like this. If you are not in the Steel Project then you can select the ASD Start tab and click the steel button.

It is now time to dust off your AutoCAD 3D skills and create a wireframe model of your proposed steel layout. You need to make sure that you only use lines as ASD will not recognise a Polyline as a valid wire. I have also found that curved members are not transferred to Revit Structure so for now you are limited to straight sections.

Once you have created your wireframe model you then can start to convert the wires into structural members. Start by selecting the profile command on the ASD Model tab.

You will then see the following dialog box. In this dialog you can select your profile and then click the Insert by Line command.

You can now begin to pick all the wires that you previously created.

Once you are happy with the model you then need to switch back to Revit Structure. If you have ASD installed on a different machine then you can save the model and use this file to update Revit Structure.

Once in Revit Structure you then select the Add-ins tab and choose Integration with AutoCAD Structural Detailing (Steel)

You can then update the model from Structural detailing or tick the use a DWG file and import the model from a dwg. Notice that you can also send the Revit Structure model to ASD. This is good for generating fabrication details and then linking the drawings back into Revit.

You should then see your model in Revit Structure! Any changes to this framing should be undertaken in ASD and transferred back to Revit Structure. A pretty neat workflow!