Shared licenses

[Cindybee]

Beloved Designers!

Could you please give me your kind consideration? I have a problem. I am 1 of 2 CAD designers that uses Catia. We have 2 Catia Licenses but only 1 sheet metal license(SMD). I have requested that the other designer please get out of generative sheet metal workbench and he never does. He roams around in the factory and leaves for lunch, goes to meetings... He gets wrapped up in a problem and forgets to get out. He is a senior designer and I am new. I can see this is going to be a point of contention. Of course the obvious answer is to buy another license but sadly I can't even get them to buy a $10 key so I can lock my purse in a drawer. Please help...any suggestions?

 

[Little Cthulhu]

Mindset comes before technical solutions. The whole situation is counterproductive, so you better start looking for a company with different set of values.

 

[Cindybee]

You are so right! Thanks you!

 

[jackk]

First of all, you should talk to your manager and explain the situation and why you're unable to do your work.

If the manager isn't able to resolve this, then go to IT and have them cancel your co-workers CATIA session which should free up the license.

 

[Cindybee]

That's a great idea!!!

 

[looslib]

Does CATIA use FlexLM for its license management? If so, you can have IT set up an option file where you always get the license with the sheet metal option.

"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli

 

[3DDave]

Some/most license managers also have the ability to time-out a license. This is at the mercy of the primary application to take note of using the particular feature(s), such as accessing specific menus; a separate module will usually have this function applied to it. If the person is simply walking away, then no features of any of the software will be used and the primary application will not re-trigger the local license program to say "Still using it" when the license manager at the server asks.

This feature is to prevent exactly the problem (technical problem, not other person problem) you are having.

The time limit can be as short as a minute, but that just leads to hilarity. A more reasonable one would be 20-30 minutes. This covers time where the initial user might take a bathroom break or look up some reference material, or do other work, without having their efforts put on hold were another person (you, in this case) to use the same license (aka, yanking the rug out.)

You should also have access to a utility for the license manager to see who is using the licenses. Checking it before lunch, for example, to see if it's in use, knowing that it will be returned to the pool in whatever the time-out period is, so you can ask about using it after lunch, rather than yanking the rug out. The utility doesn't need you to be using the primary software; you should be able to check any time.
---
Only two users? That can be a problem as there isn't anyone else to complain about the same situation. It's more difficult to create a stalemate with three people.
---
I had a situation where we had around 40 users, but only 30 licenses, and all 40 were tasked with primary design work. It became a case of Lord of the Flies. There were users arriving before 5 am just to guarantee a license. I set up a task to use the license management viewer to record the license use through the day. 20 licenses, or so, in use before 6 am; all in use by 8 am; then the numbers started to fall off. After lunch? Hardly ever got to 20 again, much less the 30 on hand.

It was clear that the high license usage wasn't because people needed the licenses, it's that they sometimes needed them and kept getting locked out by others who also didn't need them, but sometimes needed them ... and the loop continued. Many were taking up licenses on the speculation they might need them.

The problem was easily solvable - but that would require management intervention and management sucked.

 

[Wuzhee]

We are a global Tier 1 supplier with over 250 Catia users and we have 2 SMD licenses

 

[Little Cthulhu]

Wuzhee, And how do you deal with that? Do you have any kind of license usage policy or technical solution implemented?

 

[Wuzhee]

We have a CAD licenses page that shows the number of used and available ones.
We can send a mail to all the license users to release if we need it. We also release the license when we're finished. SPA, ST1, SMD, STX, these are the most used ones in the CAD team, and they are scarce.

Sheetmetal is a rare product in our company, so we rarely interfere with each other. But there are occasions when HD2 isn't enough for all the users.