Education and Training News Protocol to facilitate Autodesk software use in Higher Education Protocol to facilitate Autodesk software use in Higher Education
- 14/12/2007A protocol to facilitate Autodesk software access and use in universities and polytechnics was signed yesterday, 13th December 2007, by the Knowledge Society Agency (UMIC), the FCCN – Foundation for National Scientific Computation and Autodesk – the global leader in 2D and 3D software for the processing, construction, infrastructure, media and entertainment industry sectors. This protocol was signed under the scope of UMIC’s e-U Virtual Campus project, for which the FCCN is responsible for the operational element, and plans to make various applications available via the Autodesk Campus Licenses programme under very favourable conditions.
The Higher Education institutions concerned shall now benefit from Autodesk software licenses costing 25€ per license when they purchase at least 50 licenses, which was previously only possible when buying at least 1,200 licenses. For example, in the scope of this protocol, an institution purchasing 100 to 200 Autodesk software licenses shall cut costs by 40% and an institution buying 50 licenses shall see a 70% reduction in relation to what they would previously have paid under the Autodesk Campus Licenses programme.
This new protocol complements a previous protocol signed roughly a year ago by Knowledge Society Agency (UMIC) and Autodesk, which enabled students, professors and researchers from institutions covered by the e-U Virtual Campus project access to Autodesk’s University Portal (Student Community & Design Community) and free downloads of various Autodesk applications for personal use for visualisation, mechanical design, infrastructure design, geo-spatial information systems and building design: Inventor Professional EDU Student, AutoCAD Revit Building Series EDU Student, Autodesk Civil 3D EDU Student (all including AutoCAD), Autodesk VIZ EDU Student and Autodesk Raster Design EDU Student.
In this context, since the first protocol was signed roughly a year ago (information regarding the first semester already available), approximately 4000 licenses for personal use have been downloaded, which, according to Autodesk’s data, equates to roughly 24 million Euros for the respective commercial versions. The most requested applications were those for Industrial and Manufacturing Design, as well as Architecture, Engineering and Construction, which is a good indicator of demand linked to activities that may herald good knowledge development perspectives associated with technological progress in these areas.
As well as being able to download Autodesk software free of charge, beneficiaries can also obtain free online support for technical issues, participate in online discussion forums, access international scientific communities from various universities throughout the world freely, access the technical content library, curricula for specialisation courses for each application, e-learning classes that professionals working in the different sectors use for their basic and advanced training and job offers (local and worldwide) that Autodesk clients publish on the Portal. Furthermore, Autodesk has tried to support students using its University Portal in Portugal in their hunt for their first job by challenging each of its more than 25,000 clients and partners in Portugal to post technology job advertisements.
The previous protocol did not include the advantages for Higher Education institutions using Autodesk applications in their own activities that have now been incorporated. The range of applications and their sophistication has also been extended.
Free Autodesk Software from the Internet under the UMIC-FCCN-Autodesk Protocol for Higher Education (by product)
Distribution of the number of downloads, 1st semester 2007.
Alternative access: 
press the image bellow to amplify
Source: Autodesk Portugal.
Free Autodesk Software Download from the Internet under the UMIC-FCCN-Autodesk Protocol for Higher Education (by market)
Distribution of the number of downloads, 1st semester 2007.
Alternative access:
press the image bellow to amplify
Source: Autodesk Portugal.