Tip: Autodesk Solution Re-direction

A lot of bloggers, resellers, Expert Elite forum users and Autodesk customers that are searching the web for answers, you may find this helpful.   In this example, we are using a long URL to confirm that it will not re-direct to the new Autodesk Knowledge Network solution location.

1.  If you put this long URL solution into Google:

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?siteID=123112&id=22947844&linkID=9242259

It references to Autodesk Maya 2014 Service Pack 4.

If you click on the link, it will re-direct you to the Maya Support (AKN) page.  You can then search for the Service Pack in the Maya Support page.

2.  As a workaround, you can also go to the Google cache of that page to get the download.

3.  If you re-use a lot of solutions, you can re-create working re-directed solutions by getting the TS/DL number and putting it at the end of the url template below:

a.  http://usa.autodesk.com/getdoc/id=

b.  Get TS or DL # from the Google cache page.

4.  If you use this short URL, it will get you to Maya 2014 SP4 correctly.

Technical Solution (TS) or Download Link (DL) short URL 

http://usa.autodesk.com/getdoc/id=DL22947844

Autodesk Knowledge Network URL

http://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/maya/downloads/caas/downloads/content/autodesk-maya-2014-service-pack--4.html

Reference

http://upandready.typepad.com/up_and_ready/2014/02/autodesk-knowledge-network-2014-is-now-live.html

Epilogue

Here is another tip from the Autodesk Knowledge Network Team:

The "old" URLs contain an ID field "id=#####" as noted below:

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?siteID=123112&id=16436702&linkID=9240617

That number is a unique identifier that can be added to one of the following URLs depending on the type of content:

Knowledge Base Article:

http://knowledge.autodesk.com/article/TS_____

http://knowledge.autodesk.com/article/GS_____

Download

http://knowledge.autodesk.com/article/DL_____

Using the example above, a corrected URL is:

http://knowledge.autodesk.com/article/TS16436702

Comments

[Mike Burke]

Thanks for providing a workaround.

I have followed the steps and it works. What I have noticed on the new layout we are missing important information like the publish date and the affected programs.

For example:
The old page shows the date and affected programs...
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Hq9bWvic8DMJ:usa.autodesk.com/getdoc/id%3DTS22093011+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=nz

The new does not have this info...
http://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Launching-program-results-in-Softlock-License-Manager-error.html

I hope this will be rectified soon by putting this info back on the page, otherwise this is another step backwards with Knowledge Network.

[David Lau]

Thanks! I will alert this limitation to the AKN team.

[Stefan]

I noticed that the article ID is in the URL, it's the "&id=22947844" in this:

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?siteID=123112&id=22947844&linkID=9242259

So to get to the article you can input the number after these:

http://usa.autodesk.com/getdoc/id=DL
http://usa.autodesk.com/getdoc/id=TS

Only one of them will work so you'll have to try both:

http://usa.autodesk.com/getdoc/id=DL22947844
http://usa.autodesk.com/getdoc/id=TS22947844

It would be nice if the web developers could make an automatic redirection on the webserver for the old URLs with a mod_rewrite script...

[David Lau]

I will update that request to the AKN team.