SOLIDWORKS Online Licensing Transition

SOLIDWORKS Online Licensing, which allowed users of SOLIDWORKS Desktop to utilize named-user licensing to access their license of SOLIDWORKS on various devices, is being phased out due to a low adoption rate. You can find official information from SOLIDWORKS here. The target phaseout date is February 12th, 2022. Read on to learn suggested practices.

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Topics covered in this post:

1. Make a Plan

2. Machine Activation

3. Named-User Licensing with 3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS

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Make a Plan

As SOLIDWORKS will be phasing out online licensing, it is important to make a plan to mitigate any affects this may have on your organization. For anyone running SOLIDWORKS 2018-2021, you will continue to have access until the target phase out date of February 12th, 2022. For any users of SOLIDWORKS 2022, the online licensing will not be available, regardless of the date.

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Machine Activation

One option moving forward is to convert your license to machine activation. By doing this, that license of SOLIDWORKS will be tied to a specific computer. You can then work with your CAD administrator to deactivate the license on that device if you have a desire to activate it on an alternate machine. This does provide the advantage of only needing an internet connection for the initial activation but can quickly become tedious and messy if you’re frequently switching the activation between devices.

There is a limit of 999 activations. If this limit is exceeded, please reach out to your reseller and they will work with SOLIDWORKS to have this limit reset. If you have any licenses utilizing online licensing at the phase-out date, they will automatically be converted to machine activation.

How to Manually Convert to Machine Activation

To convert your online licenses to machine activation manually, you can go to your admin portal after logging into MySolidWorks.

Then on the Products tab, filter out your licenses by Online Licensing.

 Upon selecting one of the results, you will be taken to the details page. From this page, you will have the option to change to machine activation.

After selecting this, upon your next launch, you will be prompted to activate SOLIDWORKS with the serial number found on the same details page.

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Named-User Licensing with 3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS

If you want to maintain the functionality of being able to access SOLIDWORKS from multiple devices without the hassle of frequent deactivation and reactivation, 3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS provides you with a named-user licensing functionality. This allows you to have SOLIDWORKS installed on various devices and by logging in through the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, activate your license on your current machine.

While you can still only have it active on one device at a time, this does provide you with an option to maintain the flexibility in where you use SOLIDWORKS with ease.

Check out the 3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS Offerings if you’re interested in learning more.

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Summary

With SOLIDWORKS Online Licensing being phased out, it’s important to work with your CAD Administrator and organization to create a plan to reduce any potential impacts. By switching back to machine-based activation, you can use a serial number to activate a license on a specific computer. With this method, the user will have to deactivate on the original machine and reactivate on an alternate device if they would like to work from a different machine. Alternatively, users could transition to 3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS to continue utilizing named-user licensing functionality.

Need some help figuring out the best way forward?

Contact us today to see what solution is best for your organization.