AutoDesk’s AutoCAD is the next piece of software I’m deploying via Intune that was clearly never designed to be. It took a few tries, but I believe I’ve got the process down. I hope this makes your life much easier!

The directions here are for AutoCAD, but they should apply to any of the AutoDesk products (Architect, etc.).

Update: AutoDesk has changed how their packaging works for AutoDesk 2022 products. You must create a deployment from their website rather than the downloaded installer. I’ll have an updated guide for AutoCAD 2022 over the summer! https://knowledge.autodesk.com/customer-service/network-license-administration/network-deployment/creating-deployment/create-deployment

Create the Custom Installation Package

Log into the AudoDesk management site at https://manage.autodesk.com

Download the AutoCAD 2019 x64 installer.

There’s 4 levels of installer we’ll be dealing with.
1) The installer you download AutoDesk’s website. This is just a self-extracting, compressed version of the actual installer. I’ll call this “the downloaded installer.”
2) The actual installation files that get extracted. I’ll call this “the extracted installer.”
3) The installation package you’ll create from the extracted installer. I’ll call this the “installation package.”
4) The intunewin file you’ll generate that actually gets uploaded to Intune.

Run the downloaded installer to extract the installation files.

Go to the extracted installer folder and run setup.exe .

Choose “Create Deployment.”

Give your deployment a name without any spaces. This name will automatically be used to create the installation .ini file that will contain the setup information such as your serial key. You’ll need to know this name later.

You can only create a deployment to a network share. Since we’re using Intune, this isn’t relevant, so we’ll pick the hidden C: drive share to specify your local computer. Choose \\localhost\c$\users\[your username]\Desktop\autocad .

Disable the “Create a network log file” since this won’t be running off your LAN.

Choose which components you’d like to install. If your users are not administrators on their machines, I’d recommend disabling AutoDesk Desktop since they won’t be able to use any of its functionality.

If you’re using a license key and serial, enter it.

Wait for the installation package to be created.

Package the Installer

If you haven’t already, download a copy of the Microsoft Win32 Content Prep Tool to your Downloads folder from https://github.com/Microsoft/Microsoft-Win32-Content-Prep-Tool

Open Windows Terminal or PowerShell. Change directory into the directory just above the autocad folder you create for the network installation.

For me that’s:

cd ~/Desktop

Tell the Intune prep tool to create a package from the autocad directory, use the Setup.exe located in the img folder, and save the package to your current directory:

~/Downloads/intuneapputil.exe -c .\autocad\ -s img\Setup.exe -o .

The package will be named setup.intunewin . Since that’s not very helpful, rename it to something that is.

mv setup.intunewin autocad2019.intunewin

Create & Deploy in Intune

Log in to Intune device management at: https://endpoint.microsoft.com

Choose Apps->All Apps

Click the Add Button

Choose the App Type “Windows app (Win32) then click Select at the bottom of the screen.

Choose the autocad2019.intunewin file you created.

On the Program step change the install command to:

Img\Setup.exe /W /q /I Img\[deployment name].ini /language en-us

In my case, it’s:

Img\Setup.exe /W /q /I Img\autocad2019.ini /language en-us

(you can double check the name of your ini file by looking in the autocad\img folder)

For the uninstaller, this is a bit of a kludge since it only uninstalls the main component, not the rest. For me, this is sufficient. You can customize yours by checking out all of the options in the autocad\sms_sccm scripts\[deployment name]_Uninstall.txt file.

msiexec /uninstall {28B89EEF-2001-0409-2102-CF3F3A09B77D}

Choose 64bit Windows 10 under the Requirements

Under Detection Rules choose “Manually configure detection rules”

Click + Add

Choose MSI for rule type and enter the product code for AutoCAD 2019: {28B89EEF-2001-0409-2102-CF3F3A09B77D}

No Dependencies are needed.

Finally, assign it to whatever device groups you need. Devices in those groups will automatically download and install AutoCAD 2019. Alternatively, you can assign it to user groups and those users can install AutoCAD from the Company Portal app.

That’s it; good luck!

-Adam