Switching license type in Inventor

Problem

You have installed Inventor with a stand-alone license and want to use the product with a network license without having to reinstall the product.

Or

You have installed Inventor with a network license and want to use the product with a stand-alone license without having to reinstall the product.

Or

You have deployed Inventor with a network license and want to use the product with a series of multi-seat stand-alone licenses to give users more flexibility to work independently from any license server.

Solution

Prior to the 2012 release we did not provide license switching at runtime. You had to uninstall the product and reinstall it with the appropriate license.
For the 2012 release products, the solution described here has only an effect on the licensing method for the individual Inventor product. If Inventor is installed as part of a suite (Factory Design Suite or Product Design suite), the other products in the suite, except AutoCAD, do not have a mechanism for runtime license switching and will continue using the license method used at install time. Below are three example scenarios.

For the 2013 release products and beyond, this solution is both valid for the individual Inventor and Inventor LT product and for Inventor and Inventor LT installed as part of a suite.

Note: the regsitry keys given below are for release 2012. Change the version number "16.0" to the version number of the release you have installed. For example for the 2013 release, the version number is "17.0".

Scenario 1: switch from a stand-alone to a network license

• Make sure you are admin on the machine
• Close any running instances of Inventor
• Locate following registry key
  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Autodesk\Inventor\RegistryVersion16.0\LicenseMode
• Set its decimal value to 1
• Install the license manager and create your licpath.lic file  as explained here
• Launch Inventor
• Change the serial number in the About dialog

Scenario 2: switch from a network license to a stand-alone license

• Make sure you are admin on the machine
• Close any running instances of Inventor
• Locate following registry key
  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Autodesk\Inventor\RegistryVersion16.0\LicenseMode
• Set its decimal value to 2
• Launch Inventor
• Change the serial number in the About dialog

Scenario 3: switch from a network license to a multi-seat stand-alone license

• Make sure you are admin on the machine
• Close any running instances of Inventor
• Locate following registry key
  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Autodesk\Inventor\RegistryVersion16.0\LicenseMode
• Set its decimal value to 3
• Launch Inventor
• Change the serial number in the About dialog

Caveats

- This feature has received minimal testing, so there is no guarantee that this will work properly on all flavors of Inventor or that the registry key value will be preserved after the installation of a service pack or after running a repair.
- Above solution does not apply to Multi-flex or eFlex installations.  Do NOT switch licenses when using either of these two licensing methods.