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Is there really no home license option anymore?

Question asked by Garet Holcomb on Feb 26, 2018
Latest reply on Oct 16, 2018 by Robert Pliskat

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I work weekends regularly. I used to have the ability to run SW at my office when I'm here, or on my laptop at home, an hour away. I have never even tried to break the EULA by using both at once, and yet functionality I used to have is stripped away.

Here I am, an hour away from my laptop, with a meeting in less than an hour and I cannot run the software that is the core of my job here. I have to wait for a VAR to get around to reading my emails and so I sit on my thumbs in the meantime, making no progress at all.. Yes, I forgot to release my license at home, but I never had to do that in the past.

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Rick Becker Feb 26, 2018 8:00 AM
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You are correct. No Home License anymore.
Read more here...
Solidworks rescinded the ability to have a two machines activated at the same time?
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Garet Holcomb @ Rick Becker on Feb 26, 2018 8:14 AM
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Simply unreal. This is done unilaterally and with zero support for maintenance-paying users. Meanwhile, people who use pirated copies get to go right along as though nothing is amiss. Great way to punish the user base without doing anything at all to crack down on actual EULA violators.
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Jeff Holliday Feb 26, 2018 4:59 PM
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To be technically correct, there was no "Home License" for a standalone seat of SW. It was intended to be more of a backup situation (80% min of use required on primary seat and not to be used at the same time as the primary). There actually is a "Home User License" available with networked seats. That said, I do not like the change that was made especially with the resulting headaches as you have found with the new activation requirements. The fact that it was put into place without much advance warning was ill-advised.

To the credit of SW Corp, there is an on-line activation procedure that is being phased-in which will help greatly in the hand-off between a primary and secondary seat use. This is taking too long to implement but it is a step in the right direction.
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Garet Holcomb @ Jeff Holliday on Feb 26, 2018 6:28 PM
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I've read that "justification" since all of this nonsense started. From a customer perspective, it's much simpler: I purchased software based on functionality that was touted to me by my reseller, and that functionality has been taken away with no warning and no recourse, though no action of mine. That said, I have been an "80/20" this whole time, doing the bulk of my work at my primary computer and filling in on night and weekends at home. I'm that user that policy was supposedly set for, what did I do to deserve to have my workflow trashed in this way? The software I left to come to SW had that ability, and my reseller assured me it would be the same here.

As for the online licensing, it only works for 2018, and my reseller says there are no plans to make it work with older versions. So much for phasing in. What's more, there's no ability to "split up" the licensing scheme between versions. So here I am. I have no option to handle my own licensing remotely after this ridiculousness, and if I want to use the online "option" I have to forever give up my ability to support my customers who use older versions of SW.

Speaking of which, I had to leave the office in a hurry for an appointment and forgot to release my license. My reseller is closed so it looks like I'm dead in the water again.
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Jeff Holliday @ Garet Holcomb on Feb 27, 2018 12:00 PM
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I do agree that it is causing problems and that it certainly does require learning a new sequence of events that I wish was not necessary.
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Dan Golthing @ Garet Holcomb on Feb 27, 2018 12:37 PM
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YEP.

Furthermore, they originally sold you the software under one assumption. This may have even been the one thing that got you to write the check in the first place those many years ago instead of buying another software package, and then they take it away.

You were loyal them, but they weren't loyal to you.
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Paul Risley Feb 27, 2018 12:58 PM
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I have ran into this once since going to 2018.

My only question on this is why with all of the other gadgets can't they have in place an automatic dis able of a license feature.

In this case if your desktop is actively licensed, but no one is working on it. Why can't you pop on your laptop it runs a quick check to validate the desktop is not actively running a license and boom off to the races? I am no coding expert but considering my phone can tell me a million things I have no need for this seems like a legitimately easy way to transfer the license quickly and effectively.

My 2 pennies on this one. I do feel for you though.
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Garet Holcomb Mar 1, 2018 8:12 AM
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This is just fantastic. First they yank away my ability to have activations on my machines, then I come to work and find this:
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Garet Holcomb Mar 5, 2018 8:25 AM
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And ONCE AGAIN I am hamstrung by this ridiculous licensing policy and the incompetence by which it is administered. This morning, like a good little drone, I tried to deactivate my license on my laptop at home. I received an error message saying that I cannot deactivate this "temporary courtesy license", whatever the heck that means, and it would go no further. So, I come to my office and, what a shock, I CANNOT ACTIVATE A LICENSE AGAIN!

This is simply unbelievable and I cannot express how utterly frustrated and angry I am about this. I have paid rather a lot of money to use this software, and it was sold to me under the agreement that using two computers would be no problem. Here I am once again, losing money and productivity because of this asinine, unilateral policy change. The day is burning away and I cannot get anything done.
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Sebastyon Champion @ Garet Holcomb on Mar 5, 2018 10:16 AM
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i would contact whomever you purchased your software from. I've had a similar issue and they resolved it fairly quickly.
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Timothy Taby Mar 5, 2018 10:45 AM
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To all of those that do this regularly I would suggest getting a laptop and just taking it home with you, no deactivation needed.
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Garet Holcomb @ Sebastyon Champion on Mar 5, 2018 11:05 AM
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They've been getting an earful from me, not that they are able to (or care to) do anything about it. Meanwhile every time this happens I get to sit around on my thumbs waiting for them to show up for work and get around to it.
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Garet Holcomb @ Timothy Taby on Mar 5, 2018 10:56 AM
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Not everyone has the logistical setup to "just" do that, although I see where you're coming from. Honestly, I prefer to work on my office workstation and I don't care to travel with a $2,600 laptop for three hours every day. I like it safe at my home office where it belongs. From my perspective, why should I have to go through such contortions just because they can't get their licensing problems sorted? I didn't ask for this change; I was perfectly happy before Dassault decided to trash my workflow.
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Garet Holcomb Mar 12, 2018 7:22 PM
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And I'm dead in the water again. This time I'm working from home because of the incoming weather, and it's very likely that my reseller won't be around, either, for the same reason.

This is fantastic, and a prime example of why this policy is inexcusably stupid. I'm tired of not being able to do what I was promised I would be able to do when I paid (and continue to pay) thousands of dollars this software. I'm seriously considering going back to my old software where they treat customers as though they are important.
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M. B. Mar 24, 2018 3:11 PM
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This is a clause from our Home Usage Agreement of 2007.
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Jeff Mowry @ Garet Holcomb on Mar 26, 2018 3:20 PM
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That same nonsense also happened to me about that same time. The SW license-check server was apparently down, so no SW for you.

The irony is the epic push nearly a decade ago for SW to drive everyone to the cloud. How do you think that might have ended up? No SW license activation, no files, no nothing.

Would it truly be a magnificent feat of software engineering to put a user-activated switch on a secure server? Nope. Why hasn't that been done already? Because this whole thing is not a bug---it's a feature!
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Douglas Johnson @ M. B. on Oct 7, 2018 8:51 PM
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First the Blue Smurf color scheme, now no away seat. Let it be heard here that the Dassault Systemes management team is succeeding in their attempts to lose market share. I have five seats at my company, I am the only one who uses the away seat, so SW is not suffering on account of me. We have been so busy at work I have not had the luxury of some design time at home. I did get into a bind and needed to respond to a client on a ate Sunday night. No problem. Pop open Solidworks. Nope. Cant open. 2018. Left the house with a snarl and drove back to work. VAR that week tells me the story. Blah blah blah - and I am not satisfied at all. This brings to front the question of alternative software. Since I can do anything I want, I can sweep out the SolidWorks licenses and buy a new set of something else. I am that pissed off. So what do we buy?
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Stefan Bokma @ Douglas Johnson on Oct 8, 2018 4:54 PM
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I'm having the exact same issue, was learned to work with Solidworks at school , at the first company I worked for and now I have my own company and own a license. Yet there are all these issues with the machine license that sometimes work and sometimes don't when activate and deactivate. So now I switched to online license and guess what the servers go down every few days for 2 hours making it impossible to work. All that VAR says is that they will check at Solidworks HQ on what is going on. In response ''they were working on changing servers to 2019 pre release'' ok okay understandable. Yet I log in this morning and it say I don't have any licenses for online activation. So now a total of 2 days wasted doing nothing but trying to figure out how I should get working on my projects. I now had to switch to Fusion360 for the last 2 days because the VAR is closed in night time. So far no issues with Fusion 360 except the user interface which is very limited. Yet I hope Solidworks fixes their issues because it was quite a lot of money for me starting my company with spending all my savings on Solidworks and every year still have to pay 1500 euros to get a little bit of support when things like this happend.
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Neville Williams @ M. B. on Oct 8, 2018 10:37 PM
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EULA's the great legal catch all - or a very unsubtle way of telling you, that it's their software, not yours and they can do what they like anytime, even though you paid a kings ransom to purchase a license to use it - that's all you are buying when you plunk down your bar of gold .. current corporate modus operandi worldwide...
I think it's called capitalism -
though I think the Wikipedia definition is far to polite
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Robert Pliskat @ Jeff Holliday on Oct 11, 2018 12:03 PM
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Online activation/deactivation is great IF you have internet access! NOT! This new policy is BS. SW knows within seconds if you have 2 computers running the same serial number and they remind you in light speed that you forgot to close up a session when you grabbed to laptop for a meeting. SERIOUSLY was that really that big of a deal that they had to do this ridiculous policy change?
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Shawn Stugard @ Jeff Holliday on Oct 11, 2018 12:21 PM
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I'd bet part of the logic in not giving warning was that many folks might put up a firewall around their home copy to prevent the activation from being rescinded by the mothership. On top of that, a warning would require a press release or similar and who wants to publicize when they are taking away very popular functionality that customers rely on.

I'm sure this was a big selling point for a long time and boy would I be angry if I'd just shelled out big bucks for a copy with the promise of 2 activations and suddenly lose that ability.
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Robert Pliskat @ Garet Holcomb on Oct 11, 2018 1:47 PM
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I put in an enhancement request to rescind this ridiculous new policy. If your not happy with it, please go to SPR's and vote for it. This reminds me of the great color scheme change of 2016. If we all band together and squeak, sooner or later they will apply some grease.
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Dennis Dohogne @ Robert Pliskat on Oct 11, 2018 2:28 PM
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Robert Pliskat wrote:

I put in an enhancement request to rescind this ridiculous new policy. If your not happy with it, please go to SPR's and vote for it. This reminds me of the great color scheme change of 2016. If we all band together and squeak, sooner or later they will apply some grease.
Robert, if you want more folks to vote for the SPR please list it here and save us the trouble of having to search to find the number.
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Robert Pliskat @ Dennis Dohogne on Oct 11, 2018 4:39 PM
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Hi Dennis,
I just put in the enhancement request (1-19279705785) this morning. I've not done this before but I thought they review it and then post it as a SPR where you can vote on it....?
Thanks
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Dennis Dohogne @ Robert Pliskat on Oct 11, 2018 5:07 PM
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Robert Pliskat wrote:

Hi Dennis,
I just put in the enhancement request (1-19279705785) this morning. I've not done this before but I thought they review it and then post it as a SPR where you can vote on it....?
Thanks
Robert,
I don't really know why they even bother giving us the ER number because we can't do anything with it. Only the SPR number is searchable! When you get the SPR please post it, but you should get that within a day or two.

They are working on a long overdue overhaul of the ER/KB system, but IT IS LONG OVERDUE!! I've gotten in their face about it and am hoping it will be revealed soon. My most optimistic hope is that it will be revealed along with the Top Ten list for this year as the TT was to be included in the ER system overhaul. If not rolled out with the TT then I'm hoping they unveil it at SWW2019.
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