License Manager problems

[jarkko.rauvanlahti]

I don't know if anyone else agrees that the License Manager is far away from the standard that cad-programs should have.

1. problem we have is that we have 1 network license for Revit Building and one for Revit Series - it turns out that LM gives licenses by order so who ever is the first one to ask it form the LM gets Series and second gets Building. So people who have to use Autocad also can not use them unless they are the first to ask license from LM.

The help desk from the firm that imports Acad and Revit says it's not possible - LM should give away licenses depending only whether it is Building or Series...

2. problem The license gets stuck to the LM if borrowed. If client ends borrowing the license, LM doesn't seem to know it's free again. So one extra license is used. Connecting couple of times again to LM and activating it again license was finally free to another user.

3. problem one of our users borrowed the license from LM, connected back to our network, opened Revit on the same machine he borrowed the license to. LM ignores the borrowing and gave him the second license. Revit shows that it's borrowed to that machine, but LM give Revit another license also.

Has anybody same kind of problems with LM- know any solutions how to fix them?

I've heard that 8.1 needs new version of LM - so I'm giving my hope to that these kind of problems will go away. So far I'm stunned with Autodesk policy accepting a lot of problems with the licensing softwares they add to the cad programs. Perhaps they are more secure, but they have already caused many hours -days- loss thats away from using the Cad program that it is intended to.

[aaronrumple]

I can't comment on #1 since we don't use series. However we have never run into issue #2. I would suggest first looking at your network. The FlexLM system is widely used by companies other than Auutodesk and has a good reputation for reliability. I've had far less problems with this than CDilla.

[gibson.tim91884]

1: It sounds like your license file has the Revit Series licenses before the Revit Building licenses. I agree that the manager should know better, and can't test since we only have Series, but have you tried putting the Building licenses before the Series licenses? Then, I suspect, the Building licenses would be used first, unless somebody opened ACAD, and those people would get a Series license.

1A (QUESTION): does anyone know how we deal with new releases in Revit Series? Do we need to reload ACAD when we load 8.1, or will ACAD use the 8.1 licenses once the 8.0 licenses are removed?

2: I've run into this as well, but didn't know what was causing it. For example, my license manager says that we have licenses used by machines that we don't even have anymore. You've given me something to check, thanks!

[Scott D Davis]

Why do you have separate licenses for Revit and Revit Series? How many total licenses do you have available on the license server?

We run mulitple licenses in one license file with no problems. Revit Series 8.0, Revit Series 7.0, and Viz 2005 all run off the same license file.

[jarkko.rauvanlahti]

We don't need that many Series = ACad as we need Revit Buildings so we haven't "upgraded" that one Revit Building license to Series because of that. By the time we got the Revit Building there were no Series available.

Major problem is that the Revit Building is on bosses portable computer. Just last weekend his Revit went on demo mode back at home. Friday at the office LM showed that bosses computer had that borrowed license and another extra Series license in use at the same time. He closed Revit at work and the Series was free again at LM but at home Revit didn't know anymore that there should be still that borrowed Revit on the portable (borrowed until September 4th). And as I wrote it went demo.

It might be problem of our network, but in my opinion if something like borrowing is used, it should be more checked and back checked whether the license is borrowed or not:

1. if same client machine asks for second license to be used - program tells about it to the user and ask if user really want to use another one or if user wants to use already borrowed (or not) license. Come to think about it -if it's borrowed Revit shouldn't at all try to take another license...

2. when client machine sends msg that it wants to stop borrowing Revit before the ending time, LM should send a message back to the client and Revit should give a msg: "You have stopped borrowing the license!"

I know that if LM gets the msgs who is using Revits on our network it also should be able to send these kind of "flags" between Revit and LM. If not, LM should be able to tell about network problems. It is just lazyness of the LM developers not to consider the real situations and keeping it sure that users gets their programs working - or is the problem on Revit side that they ignores these kind of flags?

It's not an excuse that other programs aren't that better.

I'd like to add a poll: How many of you guys would like to buy or rent a car that keeps stopping in the middle of nowhere, because it can't get connected to the license manager?

[aaronrumple]

Have you contacted support?

[Danny Polkinhorn]

Jarkko,

I have noticed recently that our license manager has not been releasing licenses after they have been checked out and checked back in (not borrowed and returned). This could cause the same machine to take more than one license when it should only use one.

I suggest you stop and restart the service. In LMTools, on the Start/Stop/Reread tab, check the "Force Server Shutdown" box. Click the "Stop Service" button, wait a second, then click the "Start Service" button. That should clear out any licenses that should have be checked back in.

Also, for what it's worth, when you borrow a license it tells you the exact date and time when it will expire.

Hope that helps,

[jarkko.rauvanlahti]

Have you contacted support?


Yes and no - contacted the Revit's importer that we got the license from and they answered back that these things shouldn't happen and told to contact autodesk help desk.

I've been forced to restart the LM service again to get the flag of borrowed license away.

The funny thing is that when my boss is borrowing the license, Revit still gets another license when opened from the LM (thats the bug) and if there's no other available it finally takes the borrowed one(the funny side of this problem)!

We are kind of leaning back on this for while and waiting for the new 8.1 with new LM to finally be available here at Finland also.

For the moment I'm turning to think that this is a problem with messages Revit and LM sends in between - they are not properly confirmed at least on 8.0! Each side should know for sure that the msg has reached the other side. If not Revit should give proper notice to the user about it! But what I know about, I'm just a user..

[mschroeder]

Jarkko,

I have noticed recently that our license manager has not been releasing licenses after they have been checked out and checked back in (not borrowed and returned).



I thought I was having the same problem, then realized what was actually happening. The LMTOOLS license manager allows you to "Perform Status Enquiry" under the "Server Status" tab. When you click it it fills a scroll window with text. However it DOES NOT clear the window between clicks of the button. Therefore you will be looking at old status data if you don't scroll to the bottom of the screen. So you should first click "Edit" > "Clear Window" then click the "Perform Status Enquiry". It's a very poor UI design - to say the least.

[Danny Polkinhorn]

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately, that's not the issue. The scrolling "feature" of the status window has been a problem as long as I can remember so I was aware of that.

The status window is showing licenses whose borrowing period has expired as well as licenses that were given several days ago and not returned even though the user exited Revit (or AutoCAD). So it's a problem with license service.

Thanks,

[DaveP]

It's a very poor UI design - to say the least.
I'm with you there!
Whenever I'm messing around with FlexLM, I always exit the program & restart between Status Enquiries it so I don't get confused.

BTW, STAY AWAY from the Redundant model. Theoretically, it provides redundancy if one of your servers has to be downed, but what usually happens is that if one server is taken out of the loop, it brings the other two down, too. So the "redundancy" actually triples your chance of problems. I'm converting to a single server.

[cphubb]

I find this discussion odd because I am experiencing the exact opposite with our Revit and Series. We have 5 Revit 8.1 and 2 series 8.1 running on FlexLM single server. When I first set the system up we installed series on 3 workstations for the people who use ACAD the most and Revit on the rest. However since the entire office is in Revit almost all day the 3rd license of Acad(series) was locked out. To solve the problem I installed Revit on all workstations and just Acad on the other 3. because I noticed on the server that the 3 workstations were using just the series licenses but not the Revit. We now have almost no problems as we are just fine with the 5 Revits and occasional Acad use. I have tried many different combinations of the licenses and always can get full usage out of the 5 Revit, I think that would not be the case if I had similar problems to the above posts. I am using separate license files for series and Revit rather than combining if that makes any difference :?:

[Danny Polkinhorn]

Chris,

If I understand your post, then you are confirming what we're saying (not the opposite). Sounds like you have 7 licenses total, 5 Revit and 2 Series. So the 5 machines you have Revit installed on are pulling the Revit license and the AutoCADs are pulling the series licenses. You didn't install Revit from the Series disk, only AutoCAD.

Correct?