Watch the recording of our March 2021 webinar to learn about important upcoming changes to Autodesk product deployment and hear answers from the product management team.
Frequently asked questions:
1. Updates
Q: What’s the best way to update an SCCM package with updates after it’s initially built out and distributed?
A: We recommend creating a separate SCCM package for Updates and deploying along with the full product package.
Q: Some products have full installers and some use patches. How do we handle those?
A: Product teams are able to package updates using either full updates (full installers) or as patch updates (only delta file changes). We recommend creating a new SCCM Package for both types and not updating your existing package.
Q: How do I update an existing deployment with new updates?
A: You can rebuild the configuration and specify the existing deployment image folder. The image tool will update the existing deployment with any updates. We don’t recommend this for SCCM.
Q: Are update installs staying the same as before?
A: Product teams will continue to release updates as separate downloaded files as well as within the online deployment workflow.
2. Uninstalling
Q: Is the uninstall tool no longer supported?
A: The Uninstall Tool is not supported with the new installer. You can use the uninstall command in the deployment batch file, use Add/Remove Programs, or use the uninstaller in %programdata%\Autodesk\Uninstallers\
3. Troubleshooting
Q: Where will the log files be if a Deployment is used?
A: The network log file location is configurable. The MSI logs are in the %temp% folder as before. The new installer logs are in %localappdata%\Autodesk\ODIS
Q: Can the log filename be dynamic? such as \\server\folder\%username%-mechanical.log
A: At this time, you cannot use variables in log file paths, but we would like to add this capability in the future.
4. Scripts
Q: Is there an installation mode with a progress bar?
A: There are two modes for deployments, fully silent (no UI), and quite basic (with a progress bar and limited interaction).
Q: Is it still possible to replace the .bat file with whatever scripting language and call the installation string from that script among other scripted stuff?
A: Yes, you can transfer the command line into a script file, for example, PowerShell scripts from the Application Deployment toolkit from Microsoft and it works correctly.
Q: Can I move a deployment image?
A: Yes, the only place where you need to change the path after you move it is in the batch file. There, you can use relative or full paths as you wish.
5. SCCM
Q: What is the preferred method in SCCM, a package or application?
A: Autodesk recommends Packages.
6. Multiple products
Q: Can you combine packages? 1 contains Vault, 1 contains Vault+Inventor another contains Vault+Inventor+Mechanical. Does this method create 3 deployments?
A: It will create 3 deployments at this time. You may be able to use the image folder for the image that has the most products, and use the Collection.xml files from the others on the same image folder. In your example, use the Vault+Inventor+Mechanical deployment image, and also use the Collection.xml files from the other folders on the same image.
7. Licensing
Q: Is it possible to leave the license server empty in order to provide different servers from different sites later?
A: You will need to enter a value for the license servers. After the deployment is created, you can manually edit the Collection.xml and change the license servers. Optionally, you can create multiple copies of the Collection.xml and have different license settings in each, then use different command lines to target the different XML files.
Q: I see that the license server can be entered. Does this method still set the environment variable?
A: It will only set the license servers for those machines that do not already have the environment variable.
8. ADA
Q: Is there an easy way to exclude the Autodesk Desktop App?
A: We are adding an option soon to not install ADA with the deployment installs.
