This is an unusual post for me, but I feel that it may be of use to IT Support staff covering Schools.
The reason for this post is that I was trying to set up a silent (unattended/admin) installation of AutoCAD 2022, but the information on how to create this install was missing from the AutoDesk education website.
[update 13/04/2022 – Autodesk contacted me to advise on their process, this is documented at the bottom of the page.]
When I contacted AutoDesk support team, they could only provide details of how to create a silent install for the non educational version of the software. and appeared to be a bit confused when I advised the command line parameters they had provided were not working.
I also failed to find any information via a standard Google search. (As we all know, you are not the first person to have an IT issue and there are nice people out there that are willing to help)
What is needed first is to download the software and licence from AutoDesk’s education site (registration required).
The software is provided in a Self Extracting executable, which if run will provide a GUI to install the software manually, however if run as “XXXxXdlm.sfx.exe -Suppresslaunch -d %path%” where the XXXxXdlm.sfx.exe is the name of the setup file provided by the AutoDesk education website and %path% is the location where you want the files uncompressed to. (details from Silent Install HQ )
Once uncompressed you should have a setup.exe file, to use in the process below.
My solution was to investigate the setup files for a clue on how the installer could be used. I didn’t use any special tools for this investigation, only software that is installed by standard on Windows (all versions).
What I found was that there are some [hidden?] command line parameters that can be used, I have listed these below:
- serialnumber
- hide_eula
- productkey
- install_mode
- trial_mode
- silent
Each of these parameters has to be prefixed with a double – eg setup.exe —silent
For my silent install I used the command “setup.exe —hide_eula —trial_mode —installmode install —silent —serialnumber xxx-xxxxxxxx —productkey xxxxx” Where the Xentries are the serial and product key send by AutoDesk from the education site.
You can also create a Silent install using a similar command line of “setup.exe —installmode uninstall —silent”
I have run this on a test PC and everything appears to work successfully.
This works for the setup within the school I investigated this for, who will be using a licence server (not currently active), however I have not included details on how to configure AutoCAD to use the Licence Server as I have still to investigate this, however in the past this was managed by adding the required registry keys.
I hope this is of assistance to someone out there who may be experiencing the same issues I have.
Good luck to you and if needed please reach out to me and I’ll see if I can assist.
Note: If I get a response from AutoDesk on their preferred method I will update this page.
Additional: Here are some other potential [hidden ?] parameters that may be useful.
- manifest
- manifest_xsd
- install_source
- url_root
- clic
- substype
- session_id
- noupdate
- offline_mode
- trigger_point
- tmp_dir
- installer_version
[update 13/04/2022] Autodesk contacted me to advise on their process:
Firstly, you have to register the serial etc using their web page “RegisterOnce”. Once that has been performed then the standard Corporate software site (http://manage.autodesk.com ) will show the product (under “Product and Services”) and the option (“Custom installs and deployment“ ) to create a silent install. This process takes you “step by step” through creating an installer.
IMPORTANT: Make sure you have correctly specified the “Deployment image path” under “Deployment”. Also ensure that you have entered the serial details and licence server correctly.
Once the installer is created and downloaded, it needs to be run to create the installation on the network location you have specified during the “Step by Step” process mentioned above.
The final installation (on the network share) will contain a batch file [something similar to “InstallInventorPro2022.bat”] with three lines (two are commented out), one to install silently, one to uninstall silently and the last to install with a basic User Interface (handy for testing)
The standard silent (-q for quiet install and “deploy” rather than “install”) command line is something like: installer.exe -i deploy —offline_mode -q -o setup.xml —installer_version “1.29.0.29”
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