HyperWorks Licensing

View HyperWorks licensing units and features information.

HyperWorks 2019 licensing is based on LM-X. The conversion formula for HyperWorks Units to HyperWorks Features (what is actually in the license file) is 1 to 1000. For each HyperWorks Units (HWU) purchased, there are 1000 HyperWorks features available in the license file. This should not be confused with products that are licensed as product feature based. Unit based applications draw HyperWorks features, and feature-based product licenses draw their respectively named feature from the license file (such as HyperShapeCatia).

The HyperWorks licensing system has been designed to allow products of the Altair Partner Alliance (APA) to be licensed via HyperWorks Units. As part of the license agreements to enable partner software, product usage data must be sent to Altair. The HyperWorks license package is separate from the HyperWorks application package and contains both the Altair License Manager and Usage Report Tools (URT).

HyperWorks applications use two types of licensing: HyperWorks Units Licenses and HyperWorks Feature Licenses. A more complete description of each licensing type follows.

HyperWorks Units Licensing

HyperWorks Units licenses allow any of the HyperWorks applications to run, as long as there are sufficient HyperWorks license features available and the required product license features are present in the license file. One HyperWorks Unit (HWU) consumes 1000 HyperWorks license features.

HyperWorks Units licensing has the following characteristics:
  • Must use a license server (as opposed to node locked licenses)
  • Enforces Global Licensing (see Global Licensing)
  • Provides the advantage of the Altair unit-based business model (leveling/stacking/decaying of units, see below)
  • Leveling and stacking is not confined by the number of machine cores.
  • License decay function for massive use of solvers for simulation driven innovation
  • Multi-physics and co-simulation licensing, which determines the license draw just based on the number of cores that are used, and effectively lowers the cost.

The license server tracks and records the total quantity of units the customer purchased and how many of those units are currently being used by each user. The license server provides real time status (via almutil -licstat) and transaction-based logging of all license usage. Refer to the Altair License Manager documentation for more details.

The Altair Business Model: Leveling and Stacking

By implementing leveling, customers can use multiple applications from the HyperWorks suite at the same time without incurring additional license usage. Many of the HyperWorks suite applications level with each other. This leveling is based on the application running on the same host and username. For most applications, the actual cost of running multiple applications on the same host/username is simply the cost of the most expensive application running. The lower cost applications simply run at no additional license cost. For example, if a user starts HyperMesh (cost of 21 HWUs) and then starts an instance of HyperGraph (cost of 6 HWUs), that user will only be using 21000 HyperWorks features from the license server. The same goes for multiple instances of the same application. For example, a user can open multiple instances of HyperMesh, and still only draw 21000 features.

Applications that stack always draw the associated number of units, regardless of any other applications or concurrent usage on the user/host.

Solvers such as OptiStruct and Radioss, that run under the same user and host, level or stack the license by the following rules:
  • At the first invoke of a batch application, the HyperWorks Units level against the existing HyperWorks applications.
  • Similarly, at the first invoke of a different batch application, the HyperWorks Units still level.
  • The HyperWorks Units stack when starting the second and so forth invoke of the same batch application.
  • When the leveled run finishes, the next invoke levels again.

For example, on a single core machine, if the user launches HyperMesh first (21 HWUs), and then launches a MotionSolve job (30 HWUs), 30 HWUs will be drawn from the Altair License Manager. If the same user, under the same host, adds an OptiStruct run (50 HWUs), the total units drawn from the license server is 50 HWUs. If the user now adds a second OptiStruct run, the total units drawn increases from 50 HWUs to 95 HWUs (50 plus 50 HWUs minus 5 HWUs for license decay on the second instance. See HyperWorks Solvers Unit Draw).

The number of HyperWorks Units drawn by solvers depends on the number of machine CPU-cores and GPU used per run.

Feature Based Product Licensing

Feature-based product licensing allows a particular application to run as long as the feature name is available in the license file and the server has not reached the number of available features checked out. Think of this model as the more familiar seat-based type; there is a set number of seats or copies allowed at any given time. Feature-based product licensing does not require or checkout HyperWorks license features. However, it does require a checkout of 1 GlobalZone feature of the appropriate time zone (see Global Licensing).