Friday, August 11, 2017

Autodesk A360 Desktop Being Discontinued

Autodesk A360 Desktop is akin to the Dropbox desktop app which keeps files sync'ed between one or more computers and the Cloud. If you have it installed you will eventually see an impending expiration warning when you start your computer.


The reason given...
for ending this feature:
"We are focusing our efforts on new capabilities, these will be announced in the coming months"
Here are the end dates given by installed version:
  • Versions starting with 4, released with 2014 products: Expire June 7th, 2017.
  • Versions starting with 5, released with 2015 products: Expire July 26th, 2017.
  • Versions starting with 6, released with 2016 products: Expire August 22nd, 2017.
  • Versions starting with 7, released with 2017 products: Expire September 19th, 2017.
To keep A360 Desktop working as long as possible, download version 9.5 here. The expiration date for this version is not even listed yet.

When it does expire, it will "break" a few things in AutoCAD; the following is from the FAQ:
  • Your Autodesk A360 Drive folder will no longer synchronize with A360 Drive online. However, both your local data and online data remain available.
  • Autodesk AutoCAD settings sync will no longer function (DJS: set via the Options dialog).
  • The Autodesk AutoCAD “Share Document” feature will no longer be available from within the product.
This AutoCAD feature stops working when A360 Desktop App goes away

If you install Revit or AutoCAD via a deployment you may want to turn off this about-to-be-discontinued feature.



Read more here: https://a360.autodesk.com/a360-desktop/

Here is a related Knowledgeable article: A360 Desktop: How to turn off the message for A360 Desktop Expiration notification

Personally, I use a paid version of Dropbox sync all my data. As an author, I have a lot of files I need to access securely with recovery options. If you are using A360 Desktop to sync files with the cloud, now is a good time to start looking for other options. Many students, including mine at NDSU, get unlimited storage space via Google Drive.