hi ryntau -

I am a Product Manager on the Product Delivery team at Autodesk. Hopefully I (with some help from the Product Manager for Autodesk Account) can help you with your questions.

You are correct in that we no longer offer a multi-product deployment option as with Suites. We had very mixed reactions to that experience and we are currently exploring other solutions that will address this need. Out of curiosity, how many products do you generally install at one time?

The good news is that you can still download files from Autodesk Account for deployment to your users. Not all download options are available for all languages and platforms so you may have to select a different platform in the dialog to see additional download options. For more information, please see https://knowledge.autodesk.com/custo...wnload-methods

For #2, Subscription Contract Managers, Software Coordinators and Named Users (https://knowledge.autodesk.com/custo...ns/named-users) all have access to download products. Please contact Support for assistance with any user permissions https://knowledge.autodesk.com/conta...ng-user-access

Hopefully this helps. Please feel free to ask more questions if you need additional clarity.

Thank you for the response. What was the reasoning that multi-product deployments were removed? Our typical deployment contained Revit, AutoCAD, AutoCAD architecture, AutoCAD MEP, 3dsMax, ReCap and Navisworks. In addition to that we would include the exporters to Navisworks, BIM360 etc as well as 6 or 7 plugins (workshare monitoring, etc), and finally the current update, service packs, etc. It would also include the custom Revit.ini file (which may still be possible, I'm not sure)

So all told, we're looking at 20-30 items that are rolled into one deployment, so one click installed all.

The link you sent regarding Download options shows a Download Now button for the software. We only see an Install now button. I will investigate further and contact Support for assistance with user permissions.
Thanks again for the reply.
Ryan

Apologies - I mis-spoke there a bit. Multi-product deployments are still supported, we just no longer support the multi-product install package that was part of Suites. So, the workflow for industry collections is that you would need to download the individual products for inclusion in the deployment (versus multiple products being included in a single download).

Which tools do you use to set up your deployments?

With the premium and ultimate suites, there was a built in option to create deployment. Is that want you're referring to?

Your best bet is probably to look into some sort of deployment solution. Gordon's tools come highly rated by a few folks here. I've also heard good things about PDQ Deploy but I haven't used it personally. If you were at RTC last year Bill Debevec did a class on PDQ.

Even when Autodesk had this option, i shied away from it from day one. It "missed" certain customizations it was supposed to do, any failures in the suite deployment would sometimes roll back the entire thing, and (at least in the companies i worked with) the success rate of getting *EVERYTHING* deployed correctly was very low.

I have used (and use) Gordons Pragmatic Praxis tools, and ive worked with firms using PDQ as well. My personal preference is for the Pragmatic Praxis stuff, as it does a LOT more than PDQ does (or will do), in terms of user customization, and keeping machines up to date, since its based on status of the machine, and not *tasks that get run.*

Honestly, there was the debacle of the Revit INI generation methods a few years ago, then the changing of the stock Material UI configuration, and then the disaster in 2014(?) where the Revit Server Accelerators simply *didnt* get set through the Revit deployment, because they were "broken." (The response i got from support was "oops, we will fix that in a service pack. Sorry, for those of you that deployed early.")

Now, my actual Autodesk deployments are all extremely basic (very close to OOTB), and all of the customizations that i want done are done through Gordons tool. So much less aggravation that way.

Along the same lines, I mostly avoid the Autodesk Desktop App for a several reasons.
The main reason being that it's geared towards individual installations. We have 59 licenses and I need to download the updates. The App only has an Install button, so if I haven't already gotten the update through Luke's blog I'll use the App to start an Install, then Cancel it, then go find the files it downloaded and put them where I need them.
Another reason I don't use the App much is that it only looks for software that's installed on my computer.
We only have a few people using, for instance Max or Navis, so I don't want to install them on my computer for no other reason than to find out if there's an update available.

I uninstall the Desktop App from every machine i deploy software to. Then i install it on a SINGLE Virtual Machine, simply to download updates. Which- as you pointed out- is pointless, since i almost always get them from Luke or Gordons website, LOL.

I've gotten the sense the last couple of years that Autodesk is making it easier for users to update their own machines which makes it more difficult for BIM managers to control an office standard.. Are there any large offices that allow users to control their own updates?