HyperWorks 2017 licensing is based on the Altair Licensing System, which provides the unique and flexible Altair HyperWorks Business Model to our customers. This business model provides full flexibility to access all HyperWorks products, as well as giving access to the partner products through the Altair Partner Alliance (www.altairalliance.com). In addition, the HyperWorks Business Model supports large scale computing, design studies, multi-physics and optimization by decaying the license draw with increasing usage.

HyperWorks 2017 licensing is based on HyperWorks Units (HWUs). Each HWU draws 1000 HyperWorks license features.

 

Application Unit Draw except for Solvers

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The following table is a summary of HWUs drawn by application license feature name. Note that when actually querying the license server, it will display 1000 times the number shown in the table for each Feature Name.  Also note that Feature Names in the license file have been cleaned up and will typically be the name listed below, prefixed with HW.  For example, HyperMesh is HWHyperMesh, or RADIOSS is HWRadioss.

 

HyperWorks Desktop includes several applications. The number of HyperWorks Units (HWU) drawn by each application varies. The License Manager remembers the highest watermark for an instance of HyperWorks Desktop. For example, if you launch HyperGraph first (6 HWU), and then add a HyperView window to the same session, the number of HWU increases from 6 to 21. If you then switch back to the HyperGraph window (with or without closing the HyperView window), the total unit count remains at 21 HWU.

 

Standalone Product Unit Draw

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In additional to the HyperWorks 2017 product suite, there are many HyperWorks standalone products that draws the HyperWorks Units.  The following table is a summary of HWUs drawn of those products.

 

 

Solvers Unit Draw

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This section describes the licensing for the solvers AcuSolve, FEKO, HyperForm (Solver), HyperXtrude (Solver), MotionSolve, OptiStruct, and RADIOSS. There are two options to license solvers which are described below. First, the Per-Job licensing (as available since HyperWorks 11.0) and second, the Unlimited Solver Node (Per-Node) licensing (new in HyperWorks 14.0).

In addition to the unit draw of solvers during runtime, FEKO and OptiStruct check for the existence of a license during initial check and preparation runs. The RADIOSS Starter also checks for the existence of a RADIOSS license. These license checks do not draw any units.

The following table lists all the solver license feature names.

The license file may contain other solver related feature names for compatibility with previous releases of HyperWorks. These features are OptiStructAdvA (9.1, 10.1), OptiStructMulti (9.1, 10.1), OptiStructCheck (11.0, 12.0,13.0), RadiossA (11.0, 12.0), RadiossB (11.0, 12.0), RadiossCheck (11.0, 12.0, 13.0), and Radioss1Step (11.0, 12.0, 13.0).

 

Per-Job Licensing

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In Per-Job licensing, the number of HyperWorks Units required to run solver jobs varies depending on the number of the CPU cores and GPU, how many jobs are running concurrently, and whether it is a co-simulation run. The number of HWUs drawn per job depending on the number of cores per job is shown in the table below.

If GPUs are used to accelerate AcuSolve, OptiStruct, or RADIOSS, one GPU is counted as one additional CPU-core. For example, if running a RADIOSS job using 4 cores plus 1 GPU, it will be considered as 5 cores.

In multi-physics co-simulation the two coupled solvers will be considered as one. For example, AcuSolve on 32 CPU-cores, co-simulating with RADIOSS on 4 cores for a Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI) simulation will be considered in the exact same way as one single job running on 36 CPU-cores.

 

*MotionSolve, HyperFormSolver, HyperXtrudeBasicFEA, and HyperXtrudeFEA are not SMPD capable.

On top of the per-job license draw a decay function is implemented. The decay reduces the total license draw, if multiple solver jobs are running concurrently off the same license server. The decay factor is a multiplier applied to the regular license draw of a solver job and is applied across all AcuSolve, AcuFwh, AcuTrace, AcuView, FEKOSolver, HyperFormSolver, OptiStruct, OptiStructFEA, and Radioss licenses features. See table below.

Once a job has finished the next job will backfill into the vacated slot, and the same multiplier is applied as for the previous job. Once a job has started, the checked-out unit amount for that job will not change.

 

Per-job licensed solvers level or stack HWUs according to the following rules:

For example, if the user launches HyperMesh first (21 HWU), and then launches RADIOSS (25 HWU), 25 HWU will be drawn.  If the same user on the same machine adds an OptiStruct job (50 HWU requested), the total units drawn is 45 HWU due to decay.  If the user now adds a second OptiStruct job, the total units drawn will only be increased to 90 HWU (0.9*50+0.9*50 HWU).

 

HyperWorks Unlimited Solver Node (Per-Node) Licensing

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The HyperWorks Unlimited (HWUL) Solver Node license scheme is a per-compute node usage-based licensing. All solver instances, no matter what solver and how many cores per job are used draw HWUs based on the total number of compute nodes being used by all concurrent solver jobs combined. This license always stacks. Decay is based on the total number of nodes. See the table below.

The following license features are included: AcuSolve, AcuFwh, AcuTrace, AcuView, FEKOSolver, HyperFormSolver, HyperXtrudeBasicFEA, HyperXtrudeFEA, MotionSolve, OptiStruct, OptiStructFEA, and Radioss.

 

This means the user can run as many jobs as fit on a node for one unit count. Today nodes with 16 or 20 cores are not uncommon.

For example, an engineering group is running simultaneously 10 MotionSolve and 2 OptiStruct/Analysis jobs on a cluster, occupying three compute nodes, the license draw is 75HWU. Under the Per-Job licensing scheme above this would require 267.5HWUs.

In addition to the solver draw, should the job entail optimization with OptiStruct an additional 20HWU per OptiStruct job will be drawn.

The HWUL Solver Node licensing scheme needs to be turned on by a SolverNode feature in the license file. This license feature can be turned on/off by removing/adding comment signs (#) from/to the license feature in the license file. See Turning On/Off SolverNode License below.

Leveling of interactive applications is not affected. For example, a user on a workstation uses HyperMesh, HyperGraph (21HWU leveled) plus two OptiStructFEA (30HWU for the first node), a (maximum) total of 51HWU is drawn.

It should be noted that the HWUL Solver Node licensing is just like traditional HyperWorks Unit licensing. It is usage-based. HWUs are drawn from the pool at runtime and returned after completion of the job. Jobs are backfilled depending on what node they are running. For the licensing, the host names of the nodes are queried by the application. It does not matter how big the computer system is, it matters how many nodes are actually in use simultaneously. There is no draw adjustment during runtime.

 

Special CAD Reader Licenses

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CATIA V5 reader for HyperMesh requires a separate standalone CatiaV5Reader license feature.

In HyperWorks 2017, the Parasolid reader for AcuConsole no longer requires a separate standalone AcuParaRead license feature.

 

License Environment Variable Setting

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The environment variable ALTAIR_LICENSE_PATH is used to point to the license file or server. This has changed. In the past, the environment variable was either LM_LICENSE_FILE or ALTAIR_LM_LICENSE_FILE.

ALTAIR_LICENSE_PATH must point to a valid local license file or to a network license server in the form of port@servername (e.g. 6200@licsrver).  This new configuration is NOT compatible with the older FLEXlm based licensing system used in HyperWorks 10.0 and prior.

 

Compatibility

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Altair License Manager 13.0 (and updates) is required for HyperWorks 2017 and its updates. HyperWorks 9.1, 10.1, 11.0, 12.0, 13.0, 14.0, and 2017 are compatible with Altair License Manager 13.0.

Please refer to the documentation included with the Altair Licensing System 13.0 package (and updates) for details on how to set up the new license server and other information.

 

Turning On/Off SolverNode Licensing

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The HWUL Solver Node license is turned off in the original license file delivered by Altair. During the installation of the license server, the license needs to be turned on by removing the comment signs (#) in front of the license feature. To reverse, the comments can be added back in. The license server needs to be restarted each time the license file is being modified.

Example for SolverNode deactivated:

#FEATURE SolverNode
#{
#VENDOR = ALTAIR
#COUNT = 10000
#KEYTYPE = EXCLUSIVE
#VERSION = 16.0
#END = 2018-01-03
#BORROW = 336
#SHARE = CUSTOM|VIRTUAL
#COMMENT =       “HOSTID=asdfasfdasdfasdfadsfasfd"
#SN =    "670DF95C-D901-11E0-982F-8C04D334D7F413"
#KEY =  DVC6IF2FAE7O4JD7FVMHGOL50RJE3ACMTA78PNL6H3TK0KG2NCQUE90EGK381BNVCMLKL1 \
#       PD0F167DOCFT8F0MMVUMPEA33K8ULOKUF06V2KGDL8KV9ROJSPO8SS3CDKTLM0Q89MUS9J \
#       OQUO6HF8L362MSU42L1KJ8C1SOSUUNBOTGC8RK1I4Q7AN9ITV7AV2885NICBEB4VETHB4L \
#       S9R2GI4GOTOJ0DU5UKEF4DKNS8BFHIUEF:EKFETBFP0NOIP567VFA9PT4QGH0AHKBU8PDF \
#       UIBHCHBDL11KUJB2D50NSOHUV8QMSKOPJ5C8DJ47MHE0KT6QL45RG3VRGHS346B7KFSJ9U \
#       3GAR81S4LTO66M6L9MGVBMJFVK64ORTTGKKM48DVRMEN5U0U2NONNIGSHAOTC44TEK3J51 \
#       F7ITPLQ40H4E38QB88AS8UTU42H2FOWKD<SPCMVLPJLKBV44NL9SDKUUUQIL4952P \
#       TFLFQLN1F2SR8UEG9PHQM7J1TB4M1FPHCN6ESCUL9NQ437C4AH8AKV037845RG5E36G266 \
#       LDUMJKRBG1QVR7ECMR0HKRFJ96T1LFJKEFLEH2CH6TIJ8B4PADOLNC3KTKQ5NPVMBB \
#       QP4UQH3JHNKM677PIV7S9QE0LNDR9D2FROVS9QK1UPUJH9PP8J8F9ILBDMSF23LHDH4I7L \
#       7O52G84RDHCS93J9JK86
#}

 

 

Example for SolverNode activated:

 

FEATURE SolverNode
{
VENDOR = ALTAIR
COUNT = 10000
KEYTYPE = EXCLUSIVE
VERSION = 16.0
END = 2018-01-03
BORROW = 336
SHARE = CUSTOM|VIRTUAL
COMMENT =       “HOSTID=asdfasfdasdfasdfadsfasfd"
SN =    "670DF95C-D901-11E0-982F-8C04D334D7F413"
KEY =  DVC6IF2FAE7O4JD7FVMHGOL50RJE3ACMTA78PNL6H3TK0KG2NCQUE90EGK381BNVCMLKL1 \
      PD0F167DOCFT8F0MMVUMPEA33K8ULOKUF06V2KGDL8KV9ROJSPO8SS3CDKTLM0Q89MUS9J \
      OQUO6HF8L362MSU42L1KJ8C1SOSUUNBOTGC8RK1I4Q7AN9ITV7AV2885NICBEB4VETHB4L \
      S9R2GI4GOTOJ0DU5UKEF4DKNS8BFHIUEF:EKFETBFP0NOIP567VFA9PT4QGH0AHKBU8PDF \
      UIBHCHBDL11KUJB2D50NSOHUV8QMSKOPJ5C8DJ47MHE0KT6QL45RG3VRGHS346B7KFSJ9U \
      3GAR81S4LTO66M6L9MGVBMJFVK64ORTTGKKM48DVRMEN5U0U2NONNIGSHAOTC44TEK3J51 \
      F7ITPLQ40H4E38QB88AS8UTU42H2FOWKD<SPCMVLPJLKBV44NL9SDKUUUQIL4952P \
      TFLFQLN1F2SR8UEG9PHQM7J1TB4M1FPHCN6ESCUL9NQ437C4AH8AKV037845RG5E36G266 \
      LDUMJKRBG1QVR7ECMR0HKRFJ96T1LFJKEFLEH2CH6TIJ8B4PADOLNC3KTKQ5NPVMBB \
      QP4UQH3JHNKM677PIV7S9QE0LNDR9D2FROVS9QK1UPUJH9PP8J8F9ILBDMSF23LHDH4I7L \
      7O52G84RDHCS93J9JK86
}

 

 

See Also:

Altair HyperWorks Licensing

Global Licensing

Project Tracking

Connecting to Altair License Manager