License question

[Anonymous]

I thought I read somewhere that you can use older licenses in conjunction with new ones.

We have subscription, and 2013 just came out, and we hae 12 licenses for the product design suite.

Does this mean we can use 12 licenses of 2012, as well as 12 licenses for 2013?

[sam_m · Accepted solution]

yes and no...

As I understand it we can still use the old software but that user equivalently shares the licence with the new sofware.  So user A upgrading from 2012 to 2013 can run 2012 and 2013 on his same pc.  BUT a second user B can't run 2012 on a different pc at the same time as user A is running 2013 - trying to give yourself 2 seats with the same licence.  Same situation with the home licence - you're allowed a 2nd install as long as it's not being used at the same time (allowing you to work at home or on the move with a laptop, as long as the office pc isn't being used).

BUT... don't forget that 2012 will not be able to open or work with any data saved in 2013, so upgrade all your users together and migrate all your shared documents at the same time - thus preventing the need for 2012 to be kept on the system and any problems with users still trying to work with the older version.

[DarrenP · Accepted solution]

you get 12 total licenses of 2012 & 2013

like stated above you can not save down in inventor

[Anonymous]

Just one other question about pulling licenses from the license server.

We have multile seats for 2013 Premium and 1 seat for 2013 Ultimate.  If I install Ultimate on multiple machines, the first user to open Inventer picks up the ulitimate license from the server, and the others would then get the premium after they open. How does one choose which license to pull?  What if a user with ultimate installed, only wants to use the premium license?

[DarrenP]

its supposed to be when you open inventor it grabs the premium license first then when you switch to the lets the simulation enviroment it will return the premium license then grab the ultimate license

Is it not doing that for you?

[Anonymous]

Sorry, I'm not an actual Inventor user...I'm just going by the lincense information on the client info..it tells me what license that client is using.

On 2008, there was a Network License Launcher or something in the start menu...

As far as what you said,  I don't understand the "switch to the lets the simulation enviroment " part...not sure what you said there.  Switch to what?

[Anonymous]

OK, so we noticed that when you have ulitmate installed, it picks up the premium like you said, and then switced to ulitmate when switched to "ultimate feature" in inventor.

The question now is, can you give the ultimate license back without shutting down inventor, or does it somehow free it up again?

[DarrenP]

nope you have to close out inventor

[Anonymous]

Is there way for users to see "who" has the current ultimate license in the client?

[DarrenP]

yea

but its easier to do it from lm tools

[Anonymous]

Can you tell me how...as I don't want users accessing the sever where LMTOOLS is installed...

[DarrenP]

in the top right corner of inventor there is a little question mark with a little drop down menu you click this and say about>then click product information

[Anonymous]

That just tells me the current license for the machine....it doesn't tell me what other user has the ultimate license.

[sam_m]

Do they have a network licence or separate licences?

Only ask 'cos I think the Ultimate licence sharing only works if you have the network licence.  We have 4 seats of Premium and 1 of Ultimate, but it's more expensive for a network licence, so we have to choose which pc to install Ultimate on and it can't float between users.

Just thought I'd mention that, in case you're in a similar situation as us (non network licence) and thus you're wasting time trying to get it to do something it can't (unless we've been missing a trick ourselves). 

[Anonymous]

Yes they are network licenses.

[Anonymous]

It may be more expensive for a networked seat of Ultimate but why on Earth if you are just getting one, which you implied, would you not get a networked seat. 

With a dynamic installed networked seat all the users can use the features of Ultimate when they need it.  If only one user has Ultimate, that user will have to do all the tasks that Ultimate can do for all the users.  It just doesn't make sense to waste one users time (=money) to save the company a little money in the short run.  Also with 2013 the basic suite has Inventor so you may be able to drop down to the basic suite instead of the premium suite to save money and get the networked version of ultimate instead of the standalone.

Check out the link to get a little bit mroe information on dynamic/cascading licenses

[Anonymous]

They are network licenses....as I stated earlier.  So, with that said, if one person has the ultimate license, it would be good for the others to see "who" has that license taken (without giving them access to the lmtools server).

I thought if you could do that in the client, then great...but I have a workaround tha pulls check-in-out data from log file.

[Anonymous]

I appologize, my ignorance once again preceeds me

[DarrenP]

i don't know of way from the client side

[TravisNave]

You can install the LMTOOLS application at your workstation and configure it using license file.  In the box, put 27000@SERVERNAME where servername is the hostname of the server where the NLM is installed.  Then you can go to the Server Status tab and Perform a Status Enquiry.  This will tell you who has what licenses checked out.