I would like to ask how the STAAD Planwin license was used or activated on user machine. We received two email notification from SELECTserverOnline@bentley.com stating two users have utilized the license. I'm trying to restrict it from our hosted select server - checkout restriction but cannot find this license file from the list. See embedded images. How come there is an overage use of this license when it is not appearing on the list?
If a user has access to the Software Fulfillment Center to download software, any product can be retrieved and installed for evaluation purposes. Because of this, you may want to restrict Software Download access to specific people. This can be accomplished via the User Management portal.
Since a license for STAAD Planwin is not listed on your license file, the product will not activate but will operate in a trial mode until it expires. Once expired, the product will no longer open unless activated against a license. Trial usage of products is still reported, which would explain the overage notification, but the first 30 days of such usage in an entire site will not be considered for billing purposes as mentioned in the following forum post. If you do not intend to evaluate this product, then I recommend determining the machines where STAAD Planwin is installed by running an Applications By Machine report under Reports -> Inventory Reports and removing the product.
My apologies! STAAD Planwin has previously been available as a standalone tool only, but I just learned that STAAD.Pro V8i SS6 now incorporates it as mentioned in the following product announcement, hence the reason why it is not appearing in the list of installed programs. It has been renamed Building Planner and is now offered as an optional component alongside Advanced Analysis Engine and STAAD.beava in the License Configuration section on the opening screen. Fortunately, Building Planner is disabled by default. So usage for it will only occur if an engineer explicitly enables it by ticking the Building Planner check box. Building Planner is used for concrete building design and is unnecessary otherwise. As a best practice, engineers should not enable optional components unless a project requires one or more of them.
For administrative purposes, all optional components can be disabled in a programmatic manner by clearing a registry entry in the user profile with the following command:reg delete HKCU\Software\Bentley\STAADPro\License /v TrustLicPacks /f
The command above will have the following effect in the user interface:
Please note that by default, those checkboxes are unchecked after fresh installations of STAAD SS6. We already informed our users not to check any boxes inside STAAD to prevent unnecessary bills and we have blocked STAAD program from running if those boxes are checked through a third party application. I’m sorry to tell you but this is really a form of robbing your customer. Nobody in our organization is using this STAAD Planwin and they don’t even have idea what is that for. They are not checking this box since they started using STAAD SS6. Previous STAAD versions, it doesn’t have this option. How come we are now getting this overage or overuse of license? We cannot even find this STAAD Planwin from the list of checkout restriction (staad1.jpg and staad2.jpg) from our hosted select server.
Also I found the two licenses (STAAD BEAVA and STAAD ADVANCE ANALYSIS PLUS ENGINE) from the CHECKOUT RESTRICTION in the hosted select server but cannot find this BUILDING PLANNER or STAAD PLANWIN from the list to restrict from being checked out.
Building Planner, formerly STAAD Planwin, is intended for concrete building design in India. So I recommend leaving it disabled for projects outside of this market.
As for your checkout restrictions question, please note that STAAD.Pro V8i SS5 and later uses trust licensing like the majority of Bentley products as opposed to license checkouts. This permits an unlisted license such as Building Planner/STAAD Planwin to be used in trial mode for evaluation purposes. For STAAD.Pro V8i SS6, unlicensed products can be utilized for seven days before requiring activation with a license. An activation dialog will appear for unlicensed optional components the first time STAAD.Pro is opened for the day. If left enabled until expired, a dialog like the following will appear every time STAAD.Pro is opened until the license is disabled.