Managing licenses for PDM and Web2 using an Options File

When Web2 is set up with PDM Professional, there is often a need to manage which PDM user has access to which PDM license type, to ensure those users that need PDM CAD Editor and Web licenses always have access to them, and that the Web2 users only access the Viewer license type.

SCENARIO

An example scenario would be a situation where a company has 8 CAD Editor and Web licenses and 12 Viewer licenses.

They have 10 users who need CAD Editor and Web licenses and 12 users who will be accessing the Vault through Web2.

5 of those users always need access to the PDM CAD Editor and Web license type. The other 5 work intermittently in the Vault, but when they do, they also need CAD Editor and Web licenses.

So the question is how to ensure that the Web2 users do not access those 8 CAD Editor and Web licenses, and also how do we provide, or share, 8 CAD Editor licenses for 10 users?

In this scenario, there are essentially three groups of users:

• One group of 5 users who always needs access to CAD Editor and Web licenses, which we'll call our CADEDITORENGINEERING group.
• One group of 5 users who will need to share the remaining 3 CAD Editor and Web licenses, which we'll call our CADEDITORMNGT group
• One group of users accessing PDM through Web2 using the PDM Viewer licenses. As we do not need to expressly identify this group in the Options File, we won't need to name this group. This is because once all 8 of the CAD Editor licenses have been assigned and reserved to Groups in the Options File, only the Viewer licenses will be available.

SOLUTION

To address this, we can create an Options File to control license type access by group.

When creating the Options file it is recommended to enter the command GROUPCASEINSENSITIVE ON, otherwise the Options File will treat the user and host names with case sensitivity on.

Options Files need to have the specific Feature name entered correctly in order to work. The Feature name for a PDM CAD Editor and Web license is swepdm_cadeditorandweb.

Then we will create the two groups and assign the users to them. 

Once PDM licenses are assigned to a Group, and the Reserve command is used, then those licenses will be "locked" to that Group, ensuring that Group always has access to those licenses.

So for the CADEDITORENGINEERING Group of 5, once we Reserve 5 CAD Editor and Web licenses, we know that Group will always have access to that license type.

Then, the CADEDITORMNGT Group of 5 users will need to share the remaining 3 CAD Editor and Web licenses. Once those remaining 3 CAD Editor and Web licenses have been Reserved to that Group, that Group will always only use CAD Editor and Web licenses.

This also ensures that all 8 CAD Editor and Web licenses have been reserved to Groups, so that those users accessing PDM through Web2 will not accidentally pull a CAD Editor and Web license.

The users accessing PDM through Web2 will now only have access to the 12 Viewer licenses, as those are the only licenses not Reserved.

An example Options File for this scenario is below:

#start general parameters

TIMEOUTALL 900

GROUPCASEINSENSITIVE ON

#end general parameters

#start feature specific parameters

GROUP CADEDITORENGINEERING <user1><user2><user3><user4><user5>

GROUP CADEDITORMNGT <user1><user2><user3><user4><user5>

RESERVE 5 swepdm_cadeditorandweb GROUP CADEDITORENGINEERING

RESERVE 3 swepdm_cadeditorandweb GROUP CADEDITORMNGT

#end feature specific parameters

For detailed instructions on creating an Options File, and for managing other license features, we have a SolidNetWork License Manager Options File guide here: SolidNetWork License Manager Options File

If you have any questions regarding the information above, please contact Hawk Ridge Systems Technical Support at 1-877-266-4469  (US), 1-866-587-6803  (CAN), or support@hawkridgesys.com.