Home Usage licenses (network and multi-user) – everything you need to know!

Home Usage licenses allow your users access software on an on-going basis on a non-transportable home-based computer in addition to the ones installed on your office-based machines.

This is a subscription benefit and it excludes devices, such as laptops, that could potentially be used both in the office and out of the office – if you are intending on doing this then please see the section at the very bottom of this article that is entitled “borrowing licenses”.

If you have a single-user subscription license or single-user maintenance license then there is no need to apply for a home-usage license – you simply login at home to the software using the credentials that you use at work and it takes care of activating itself which makes things simpler.

So  if you have a multi-user Subscription or multi-user (“network”) maintenance license then you’ll need to generate new home usage licenses to allow you to get the software working off-site for your software users.

If you fit into the above category and you are an Primary or Secondary Admin (formally know as Autodesk Contract Manager or Software Coordinator) then you simply need to go to and follow the prompts. https://knowledge.autodesk.com/customer-service/account-management/users-software/home-use/request-home-use-license

You’ll need to login using your credentials.

Now click on “Get started”

Make sure the details shown are correct and press the “Next button”

You then enter the serial number of the product that you want to get the home usage serial generated for. If you have a “Collection’ then you’ll need to generate a serial for each piece of software in the Collection that you need the serial for. Also note that you’ll need to generate a serial for each version of that software if you need 2019, 2018 and so forth.

Once you’ve followed the steps, you’ll get a confirmation and you’ll also get an auto-generated email as confirmation as well. These serials should now appear in the Account Center if you log in using the Account Manager or Software Coordinator login.

Very importantly, please note that these serials only last 13 months. This means that they’ll need to be regenerated at least that often and you’ll need to inform any user of the home-usage licenses that they’ll need to update the serial number in their software. You will of course repeat the process above at that time.

Our advice is to make a reminder to yourself in your calendar to renew the licenses at the 12 month mark to allow yourself some time to get your users to update their licenses.

Borrowing licenses:

As we’ve seen above, Home Usage licenses cover circumstances where you have a fixed machine at home (that never comes into the office and stays put). If you are running multi-user / network licenses and you wish to use these licenses on transportable devices such as laptops, Surface Pros etc, then you also have the ability to “borrow a license” in order to stay compliant with your software agreement. When you borrow a license you remove that software for a set period of time from the pool of available software at your office. If you are in these circumstances then please have a look here – Autodesk Borrowing Licenses

Please note that the Autodesk Collection Licenses work differently to the previous Autodesk Suites with regards to the way that you need to borrow specific items from them. With Suites, you basically borrow the entire Suite at once. In contrast, with the Collections, you now have to borrow all products that you require. It is advisable to make sure that you borrow each and every piece of software that you might need. If for example you need one of the Autocad “verticals” then you would be advised to borrow Autocad and also open the specific product and borrow the license from within that product too. In other words, it would be best to take the time to borrow stuff that you might need when you’re in the process of getting ready to work from home.

Please refer to this article for the full run down –Borrowing Autodesk Industry Collections

 License troubleshooting:

• Finally, in order for the single user license  and also for BIM 360 Design to function, the following sites needs to be white-listed in the browser, details here: