I used to have solidworks running on my laptop, and my desktop at work.

Solidworks used to allow this. They used to be that nice...

This has changed, but it wasn't quite correctly communicated to me by my VAR. I thought I could continue as I was.

We have just bought an extra seat, which we are going to share between two PCs, by releasing the licence from one, and activating it on the other. It only takes seconds says my VAR.

..maybe,  I thought, provided the sldwx server is on, and provided we actually have an internet connection...We'll see.

(Pity that despite commiting to 3 years support for three licences we aren't actually trusted not to use a licence twice at the same time, we must trust SW not to "kill the product" in the next three years but they wont trust us to stick to the EULA...)

Anyway while messing about with this licence swapping, I've accidentally released my licence on my workstation, and now my laptop has hold of it 40 miles away in an empty house. I'm writing this as my VAR account manager has gone away to see if she can help and save me wasting most of the day on a 2 hour round trip just to press a few keys on a laptop!

(Its - been nearly an hour so far and she hasnt called back, great service considering I made an instant transfer of £9000 to them just the day before yesterday...)

I'm now faced with the possibility of being in the wrong place compared to where my licence is active, unless I remember to religously release it every day from each location. A major and serious loss of useability!

Which brings me to my question, can I make solidworks release the licence on shutdown, or make a script release the license when I shut down my computer?

Would that actually be desireable anyway?

Then what happens on the occasion when I need to use the software and the solidworks server is not available? - am I then subject to always needing internet at start up?

I'm thinking of the scenario where I'm snowed in in my mountain home (only a slight exaggeration that) and that same weather cut out my flakey rural internet too...