Query for Available Network License.

[Mario-Villada]

Dear All,
I Have an application that runs in a remote server with inventor installed, the problem is that I have to wait for someone to free a license so my application can open inventor and do its operations.
Does anybody know if there is a way to find out whether there is an available Inventor Network license before opening inventor?

My first thought was to trap the error, but the problem is that inventor shows a message saying " License could not be obtained. plase contact your dealer" and somebody has to click OK and then my app shows an error.

I have not been able to set silenceoperation to true because I need to open inventor first.

Any help woud be appreciated.

Mario. Edited by: Mario-Villada on Jun 23, 2009 10:34 AM

[cadfish1]

What do you mean by "I need to open inventor first"? You do have to open Inventor first before setting SilentOperation. What are you doing with Inventor? If all your operations are read-only (meaning querying, printing, etc - i.e. not modifying data) then you could use Apprentice. Apprentice is an interfaceless version of Inventor's API that is mostly read-only). Apprentice is standalone so there's no licensing issues. It comes with Inventor and Inventor Viewer. Inventor Viewer is freeware.

[Mario-Villada]

Thanks for your Advise, it is a good Idea, however what I need to do is to create new assemblies and drawings and it is my understanding that apprentice cannot write on inventor files (except for the iproperties).

This is what I need to do in inventor:

I have a separate application used by people without inventor. This app writes a text file and send it by e-mail to an address installed on a PC (server) with inventor installed. In this server I have another application that checks for incoming e-mails, open them, download the attached text file, fires up Inventor, create assemblies, idws from the assemblies and then save copies of these idws in dwf format to be sent back by e-mail to the original senders and then, after processing all the mails, it closes Inventor.

The problem is that my company told me to use one of the floating network licenses for inventor, we don't have many of them an most of the time there is no license available. therefore I have to wait until one inventor user stops using a license, so my application can start working.

As you can see, my application in the server will run unsupervised, without the need of user interface. I even use Inventor in Invisible mode.; In the case when there is no license available, inventor shows a dialog box saying "License could not be obtained. Please contact your dealer" and the application stops waiting for user input.

What I would like to do is either get rid of the dialog box or find out a way to tell whether there is an available inventor license to be used before opening inventor.

I've been trying to set SilenceOperation = true to be the default value but it seems like inventor sets it back to false each time inventor is opened. and if I open Inventor to set it to true, the famous dialog box stops me from doing it.

I saw a post in this group of someone using Autodesk License Manager log file to read license information, I would appreciate it if someone sends me an example of this.

Many thanks.

Mario.

[cadfish1]

In my opinion the best option is to buy a standalone license but this might not be an option for you. If your company can't/won't afford it then I would always keep Inventor on that server. All applications have memory bleed so you should build in occational shutting down of Inventor then reopen it write away so no one take the license. If you company won't even let you take a license permanently, I'd look for another company to work for. My guess is your app is saving the company at least a fair amount of money, enough to pay for a license in a relatively short amount of time. Maybe that your angle, justify the purchase of a standalone license based on man hours saved (i.e. the programming will pay for a license in X amount on months). Just a thought.

[Mario-Villada]

Thanks a lot. Exactly what I needed to hear. Now I have more arguments to support the need of a standalone license for my application.

Thanks again.