Pair your workstation

Link an AutoCAD seat to your simplestruct.com account — one browser sign-in, nothing to type.

Pairing connects the ConstructiVision plugin on a CAD workstation to your organization’s account at simplestruct.com. It is done once per machine: you start it from AutoCAD, finish it in your browser, and the workstation stays linked from then on. An unpaired seat still runs ConstructiVision fully — pairing is what connects it to your token balance so the seat can license drawings for permanent offline printing. See Membership & Tokens for what a token buys and what membership adds; this guide covers the pairing itself.

Why pair

A paired workstation is signed in as you, under your organization:

  • It can license drawings. Spending a token from a paired seat writes a permanent license into the drawing itself, so that drawing prints and exports free forever — offline included. What spends a token, and when, is covered in Membership & Tokens.

  • It sees your account from inside AutoCAD. On startup a paired seat checks in and reports on the command line — “entitlement OK — balance=7, membership=active” — so you know your token balance without leaving CAD.

  • It appears on your Billing page. Every paired workstation gets its own row under Authorized workstations, where you can see when it was authorized and last used, and revoke it — see Manage your billing. Pairings are personal: the list shows your own machines only, and only you can revoke them — even teammates in your organization can’t.

Nothing else changes: drawing panels, saving, and every ConstructiVision dialog work the same whether or not the machine is paired.

Before you start

  • A simplestruct.com account. Sign up with your company email address — accounts are organized by company domain, and public providers (gmail, outlook, …) are refused (see Working as a team). Creating the account is free; no membership or tokens are required to pair.

  • A browser on the workstation. Pairing finishes on a sign-in page that ConstructiVision opens in your default browser.

Pair from AutoCAD

The first time ConstructiVision starts on a machine that is not yet linked, it offers to pair for you:

  1. A dialog asks — “Link this workstation to your SimpleStruct account?” — and explains that Yes opens the sign-in page in your browser, nothing to type. Click Yes. (Click No to skip; the command line confirms you can sign in later from the menu, and the offer returns next session.)

  2. Your browser opens the SimpleStruct sign-in page. If you are not signed in yet, the page reads “Sign in to authorize this workstation” — sign in with Google, LinkedIn, Autodesk, or email.

  3. That’s it. With a signed-in browser the page authorizes the workstation by itself and hands the result straight back to AutoCAD — the command line confirms: “paired — this workstation is linked to your SimpleStruct account.”

To start pairing yourself at any time, use CV → Sign In (Link Workstation). AutoCAD prints “sign-in page opened in your browser. Finish signing in there — this workstation links automatically.” and the same browser flow runs. On the browser page you can give the machine a label (for example “Office laptop”) before clicking Authorize this workstation — the label is how the machine appears on your Billing page.

Two conveniences worth knowing:

  • Already signed in to AutoCAD with a registered Autodesk account? If your Autodesk sign-in is already known to SimpleStruct, ConstructiVision skips the question entirely — “Your Autodesk account is already registered with SimpleStruct — linking this workstation automatically…” — and pairs hands-free.

  • Take your time in the browser, but not forever. AutoCAD listens for the browser hand-off for about five minutes. If the window closes — “sign-in window closed” — just run Sign In from the menu again.

If the browser hand-off is blocked

On some locked-down networks the browser cannot hand the result back to AutoCAD. The sign-in page then shows a short one-time pickup code instead: type CVIDN_PAIR_CODE at the AutoCAD command line, and at the “Enter cv-web pairing code:” prompt paste the code. The code is single-use and expires about 90 seconds after it appears (the page shows the exact time) — if it lapses, click Authorize this workstation on the page again for a fresh one.

Confirm it worked

  • In AutoCAD, immediately: the command line reads “paired — this workstation is linked to your SimpleStruct account”.

  • In AutoCAD, every start after that: the seat checks in on startup and prints your balance — “entitlement OK — balance=…, membership=…”. (An unpaired seat instead prints “Not linked to a SimpleStruct account yet — use Sign In on the ConstructiVision menu.”)

  • On simplestruct.com: open Billing → Authorized workstations — the machine is there as a new row, under the label you gave it, marked active. See Manage your billing.

A second workstation, and re-pairing

  • Each machine pairs separately. Run the same sign-in on every workstation you use; each gets its own row on the Billing page. Pairing is also per Windows user — a colleague’s Windows login on the same machine pairs on its own. For how many devices one account can link, see Membership & Tokens.

  • Re-pairing is the same flow. A workstation link that was revoked from the Billing page, or that aged out on its own (the 90-day / 30-day-idle rules are described under Authorized workstations in Manage your billing), is restored by simply signing in again from CV → Sign In (Link Workstation). Nothing on the machine is lost — already-licensed drawings keep printing offline regardless of pairing state.

  • To unlink a machine, revoke its row on the Billing page. If a stale link is ever rejected, ConstructiVision clears it and tells you — “cached token rejected — cleared” — and the next session offers to sign in again.

If something goes wrong

Sign-in loops in the browser, “Your device was deauthorized…”, or a workstation showing Expired on the Billing page are all covered symptom-by-symptom in Troubleshooting — see Account, licensing & tokens and the cv-web section.