Free Extended Access to Cloud Collaboration Products

From the official press announcement on March 17, 2020 by Andrew Anagnost, Autodesk’s president and chief executive officer. Read the full press release.

“To better support customers facing this new reality, Autodesk is announcing a temporary Extended Access Program for several of our flagship cloud collaboration products.

Let me be clear: we’re not introducing this program to convert customers into paying users. Our goal, instead, is to get a program up and running as quickly as possible to provide customers increased flexibility in what’s become a challenging work environment.

Here’s how the program will work:

• Beginning in the next several days, customers can get free access to select Autodesk products and services.
• Products and services will include BIM 360 Docs, BIM 360 Design, Fusion 360, Fusion Team, AutoCAD Web and Mobile, and Shotgun – all for commercial use.
• Customers can take advantage of this program by visiting Autodesk.com and following the steps they’d normally take to sign up for an Autodesk product trial on our website.
  We know this will be an imperfect experience in some ways but, as stated earlier, our goal is to give customers access to this program as quickly as possible. Leveraging our existing product trial experience on Autodesk.com is the most effective way to do this.
• Customers can take advantage of the Extended Access Program until May 31, 2020. However, we will continue to evaluate a potential expansion of this program as the needs of our customers warrant.”

Visit the Autodesk COVID-19 Autodesk Resource Center for details and updated instructions.

Autodesk will host a working remotely Answer Day on March 24, 2020.

Business Issues

From the above COVID-19 Autodesk Resource Center page:

Autodesk is committed to minimizing disruption to your business, and currently, these events are not impacting our uptime or our global R&D efforts. We are undertaking some changes to make doing business with us easier.

• To better support customers facing this new reality, Autodesk is announcing a temporary Extended Access Program for several of our flagship cloud collaboration products. More information coming soon.
• We realize these extraordinary times may create cashflow constraints on many of you. To offer some relief, we will extend contract payment terms to 60 days for all customers and partners, for new orders and renewals placed directly with Autodesk now through August 7, 2020.
• We will extend the ability to purchase new multi-user subscription plans to August 7, 2020, and move their retirement to August 7, 2021. While we communicated that we would begin transitioning customers to named users starting May 7, 2020, we do not want to introduce a change at a time when business-as-usual is hard enough. See New Effective Dates below.

New Effective Dates

• August 7, 2020 – Multi-user trade-in available at first renewal for multi-user subscriptions and network maintenance seats
• August 7, 2020 – New multi-user subscriptions no longer for sale
• August 7, 2021 – Multi-user subscriptions retire and can no longer be renewed

How this Effects Employing Civil 3D and BIM 360 Tools

The BIM 360 Docs will work for published PDF deliverables and document management for any release of Civil 3D, Map 3D, or AutoCAD.

See the recent video presentation An Overview BIM 360 Docs for Civil by Jeff Bartels of Autodesk on the fundamentals and mechanics of BIM 360 Docs.

Full BIM 360 Design support will work only with Civil 3D 2020.2 and much better with the latest Civil 3D 2020 Update 3.
You will need to Upgrade software and projects and then migrate them to BIM 360 Design.

See the following posts with links and videos for help and details.

Civil 3D in BIM 360 and Batch Save Upgrades

Register and see more free Documentation and Help for Civil 3D and the Framework for Civil 3D.

See the BIM 360 Tools video section our curated collection of many related videos from the best experts in Civil 3D Land.