How to Control Who Uses Which License

When you have a SolidNetWork (SNL) License, you might have an assortment of SolidWorks licenses to choose from, such as Standard, Professional, and Premium.  However, there might be times that the one you need to use is not available.
 
Anyone tired of having to say, or hearing others say: “I need to finish this last part of my project, but I can’t because PEOPLE keep taking MY Premium License!”

If only we could have our licenses on our server, but not let “just anyone” grab them. If you like to have your cake and eat it too, you’ll love this. We can easily do exactly that using the SolidWorks Options File.

For this example, we are going to make a list of who can and can’t use the Premium licenses, and limit the others to Professional. We are also going to reserve one seat of SimPro for the Premium user group.

Premium users: Tim, Chip, Tom

Professional users: Peter, Ronnie, Paul

Start a new text file (in NotePad or similar), starting with the following format:

GROUP <Group_Name> <user> <user> (do not include <>)

Such that:

GROUP is the FlexLM syntax to define a group
Group_Name is the name to use to reference the group
User is username. The number of user entries depends on how many users are in the group.

 



Once that’s set, you MUST save as sw_d.opt , and you must save it to the location where your license manager is looking. Typical install location shown below:

 

We need to launch the SNL manager, Modify, then Activate/Reactivate as shown.

Make sure you point to your options file as well.

 

After a quick activation, all good!



 

For a list of all the different control options, see chapter 5 of the FLexLM user guide.  You can find that you your machine, C:\Program Files (x86)\SolidWorks Corp\SolidNetWork License Manager\Docs\flexuser

 

http://files.solidworks.com/supportfiles/flexLM_Enduser/licensingenduserguide.pdf

 

contributed by Tim Strange, Progression Technologies