SolidNetWork Licensing – Why don’t I have a free license?

I have received a number of calls in regards to licensing questions related to Network (SNL). A majority of the time, people think that they have more licenses then they really do. This is actually what it looks like from the license manager if you do not understand the licensing scheme for SNL. Once understood, it is pretty straight forward.

The issue usually always relates to SOLIDWORKS Standard licenses…."I don't have any free".

To start with, you must understand that the difference in a SOLIDWORKS Standard/Professional/Premium are really just the Add-ins available. With a SNL license, it will pull the appropriate license as required from the Add-ins that are loaded.

-If you start a SNL client with no Add-ins at startup, you will see under the SNL license usage that a Standard license has been taken. Once a Professional or Premium Add-in is loaded, it will then take those licenses.

This is where the confusion begins. A Professional and Premium license requires a standard license to be taken. There will always be a Standard license "Reserved" for a Pro/Prem license.

Let's look at the example below. In this SNL, there is only 1 Soildworks Premium license (among some other non-standard packages). The SNL shows 1 Premium, but also 1 Standard.

This is correct, since you need (reserve) 1 Standard for 1 Premium.

-Now if you had 1 Premium license AND 1 additional Standard license, the standard license would show a QTY of 2.

This can be explained better by looking at the License Borrowing tab.

As you can see, there is 1 Premium & 1 Standard, however there are no "Free" Standard licenses. This of course is because the Standard has been reserved for the Premium license.

Hopefully this sheds some light on the SNL licensing process.

Blake Cokinis

Sr. Support Product Specialist
Computer Aided Technology, Inc.