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Inventor Dynamic licensing - Product Design Suites

12 REPLIES 12
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Message 1 of 13
pcrawley
481 Views, 12 Replies

Inventor Dynamic licensing - Product Design Suites

I think I've read all the doc's my brain can digest, but still can't find the answer to this question: 

 

Network license pool has 2 PDSS and 2 PDSU licenses.

 

  1. Users A, B, C, and D launch Inventor (licenses are allocated such that Users A & B get PDSS license, and Users C & D get PDSU license).
  2. User A closes Inventor, so one PDSS is returned to the pool.
  3. User A reopens Inventor and accesses an Inventor Professional feature. No PDSU license is available.

 

The question is, should Dynamic licensing recognise that User C or User D could have their allocated PDSU license swapped for a PDSS license, thus releasing PDSU license for User A?

 

This appears to be an issue we are seeing just now, such that PDSP/PDSU licenses are in use (by say AutoCAD users) and preventing access to those who need to use Inventor Cable & Harness.

 

Peter

Peter
12 REPLIES 12
Message 2 of 13
DarrenP
in reply to: pcrawley

if user C&D already have a PrDSU license already the only way for them to grab a lower suite license is to close out of inventor

the dynamic & cascading licensing only goes up and does not go back down until you close out of the program

DarrenP
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Message 3 of 13
TravisNave
in reply to: DarrenP

Darren is exactly right, as usual.  This is true for any product.  Licenses will always cascade up, but cannot move down once a lower license becomes available, or a higher end feature is no longer being used. 

 

This would be a nice wish-list item... but yeah, as Darren said, you gotta close out and relaunch to free one up. 

 

You might be able to use an adskflex.opt options file to restrict what users are allowed different suites, so that you can better gauge what you want.  Otherwise, close and relaunch is the way.



Travis Nave Send TravisNave a Private Message                                             Need help in your post? Mention me with @TravisNave



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Message 4 of 13
pcrawley
in reply to: TravisNave

Great answers.  Thanks Darren / Travis.  

Can I now ask a supplementary question?!

 

Assume the site only has PDSS and PDSU network licenses.  We've already established there is no mechanism to pass-back a higher-value license when a suitable, lower-value license becomes available.

 

Can you think of a mechanism or protocol to deal with a situation where someone with a need to run Cable & Harness in Inventor is prevented from doing so until someone using basic AutoCAD gives up the PDSU license they inadvertantly collected because it was the only one available at the time?

 

(Is there a mechanism in Inventor to determine which license you have got?)

 

I was thinking about an options file, but it restricts access by feature code (amongst other things).  As far as I know, all the products in say PDSP are covered by the same feature code - therefore I can't restrict a user to access "just" AutoCAD - he gets restricted to PDSP or PDSU - not the individual components of each suite.

 

Assuming I'm right (I hope you'll tell me I'm not!) it seems as though efficient license utilisation is not really practical in a multi-dicipline environment.

 

Peter

Peter
Message 5 of 13
DarrenP
in reply to: pcrawley

an options file may do that

but i'll have travis answer that he knows more about the options file than i do

DarrenP
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Message 6 of 13
DarrenP
in reply to: DarrenP

i am assuming just users C & D need the inventor professional features?

 since they are allocatted to grab the Prdsu licenses

DarrenP
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Message 7 of 13
TravisNave
in reply to: DarrenP

Darren makes a good point.  If you have users that never need to use the more expensive license, you might be able to use the option to reserve those seats for specific engineers.  That would ensure that they grab the license first instead of the lower suite, leaving the lower suite to the other users.  Might be doable...



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Message 8 of 13
pcrawley
in reply to: TravisNave

Thanks for your help so far.  

 

Unfortunately, all users need access to all products.

 

If I could break down the usage into distinct groups I might have a chance of making an options file work.  However, I think the real problem is that the applications don't automatically revert to the lower-license levels.

 

In an ideal world, we'd just have 4xPDSU licenses, but there's a huge cost differential.  I guess we just have to find a way to work with it.  Any suggestions are welcome.

Peter
Message 9 of 13
DarrenP
in reply to: pcrawley

Product Design Premium 2014 has inventor professional in it now

DarrenP
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Message 10 of 13
pcrawley
in reply to: DarrenP

🙂  If only that was the answer.  I know Inventor Professional is included with PDSP 2014 - but the site runs 2013, and it's not just 4 seats, it's more like 44 over multiple sites.  I'll stick with 4 for this example because it's just as valid.

 

It's the principle of the licensing that I'm stuck with.  How to let all users use all the products they have bought?  

 

It's unlikely they'll all want to run Alias simultaneously (still only in PDSU) but quite likely that half the users will start Inventor in the morning - the other half start AutoCAD thereby getting the more expensive licenses.  If some of the early Inventor users now need Alias, they can't!  And no user can tell what license type they have aquired when starting their application - so even an email round the office(s) to ask if someone could release a PDSU license is pointless.

 

Tell me I'm wrong - please!  This just looks like a huge black hole in dynamic licensing.

 

 

Peter
Message 11 of 13
TravisNave
in reply to: pcrawley

I think you should be able to come up with a number of engineers that need the more expensive suite and just reserve that number of seats for them.  Then when they use any version, they always have it.  Anyone else will get whatever is left of the rest.



Travis Nave Send TravisNave a Private Message                                             Need help in your post? Mention me with @TravisNave



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Message 12 of 13
pcrawley
in reply to: TravisNave

Thanks for the advice Travis, but I don't think I'll pass it on.

 

If there are 2 "cheap" licenses, 2 "expensive" licenses, 4 users who all start work at the same time, and they all need something from the "expensive" license during the day, then there's no way that "dynamic licensing" can work.  I think that was the answer I was looking for unless you think otherwise?

 

Reserving the higher value licenses for a special group of users is a bit pointless because that's a chunk of the available license pool that is unavailable to anyone other than those users.  If one or more of the elite users goes away for a time, that's a valuable resource just doing nothing.

 

If you think that upgrading to 2014 is the solution, think again. Try 2xPDSS and 2xPDSP.  4 users, all in different offices.  All 4 users want to use AutoCAD Electrical and Inventor at some point during the day.  This is a reasonable scenario?  But it just doesn't work does it.  There is no way you could possibly describe this as "dynamic" licensing.  

 

No.  I think the conclusion here is that "dynamic licensing" is a misleading description at best.  You get the cheapest license available at the time you log in, and you have no way of knowing which license you have taken.  And that's it.

 

Thanks again for your help though.  I'm feeling somewhat disappointed and not looking forward to explaining it all on site.  At least I have a much better understanding of how it works.

Peter
Message 13 of 13
NathanLos
in reply to: pcrawley

Some of the properties of the client's license are shown in the Help icon menu > About command > Product Information dialog. Additional details can also be accessed by performing a status enquiry using lmtools on the network license server. I hope this information will make it a little easier to determine which users are consuming the higher-level licenses.



Nathan Los
Principal Engineer
DLS-Mechanical Design
Autodesk, Inc.

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