floating solidworks office license

[RawheadRex]

I was asked to investigate whether it's possible to use SolidWorks Office add-ins (FeatureWorks, Animator, etc.) which were included as part of our recent purchase of a floating license of SolidWorks in conjunction with established stand-alone seats. I've tried a couple of different approaches to see if I could make it work but had zero success.

As luck and Murphy's Law would have it I can't get in touch with anyone at our VAR for assistance so I'm asking, has anyone tried such a hare-brained idea before and made it work? I know that I saw in a previous thread where someone was floating a PhotoWorks license but gave no details as to how they accomplished this.

Any thoughts or ideas are appreciated.

Chris Gervais
Mechanical Designer
American Superconductor

 

[DennisD]

I thought the SolidNetWork License (SNL) supported add-ins but wasn't sure so I went to the knowledge base section of the subscriber's area of the web.

SNL fully supports SWX add-ins: PhotoWorks, FeatureWorks, SWX Piping, Animator.

SNL does not support Gold Partner (GP) products. That licensing is not dictated by SWX. Check with the GP.

There was also a question in the SNL area of the knowledge base to wit: do different add-ins require the same number of licenses as SWX installations? Answer: No.

Check the knowledge base. There is some really great stuff there.

Hope this helps.

- - -DennisD

 

[RawheadRex]

DennisD,

The Knowledge Base is the first place I looked. The problem is that when you have a SNL, SolidWorks office is tied into that S/N. So the bottom line is that you can't use SolidWorks office add-ins associated with the SNL installation in conjunction with a stand-alone installation (i.e. a different S/N).

Our issue is that we use the SNL only for part-time users who aren't likely to make use of the functionality contained in the SolidWorks office add-ins. However the full-time "power users" such as myself would like to make use of the SolidWorks Office add-ins.

The work-around is to install SolidWorks on the client machine as two seperate installations using the standalone and SNL S/N's respectively for each installation. This presents me with a new problem. It seems that if you install using the Windows Installer, when you try to do the second installation it is assumed that I want to update, repair, or remove the first installation. I'm not being allowed to install a second seperate installation for some reason. If anyone has any ideas on how to get around this using Windows Installer please let me know. I've already done an end run by launching a traditional installation directly from the install CD but that's not going to work long-term. Upgrading existing seats to SNL isn't an option either right now due to financial considerations currently existing in our company so I'm forced to find a "zero-cost" work-around.

Thanks,
Chris Gervais
Mechanical Designer
American Superconductor

 

[KWC]

I am looking into this one myself.

Here is what I know so far:
You would have to set-up a seperate boot on your computer because only one serial number is going to be stored in the registry. The SNL serial number is different from your stand alone, and both are formated to indicate to SW what type of license is being used.

Set up a second boot partition on your computer and load SW on that partition with the SNL serial number. You will have to restart your computer to change to the other setup.

Another way to set up the second boot:
It would be easiest to buy a piece of software (Partition Magic - $56) that would help in creating alternate boot partitions. Without this, it is a little more involved.

Hope this helps,
Kevin

 

[RawheadRex]

Hi Kevin,

Thanks for the info. What you say make a lot of sense. I found that the end-run attempt I made at a second installation turned up the same scenario you described. I have two seperate installed directories of SolidWorks but no matter which executable I use, the S/N is the same for both (in this case the one I entered on the second installation attempt, which makes sense).

Thanks,
Chris Gervais
Mechanical Designer
American Superconductor