Introducing a new sisNET ProductID
Since the early days of sisNET, there have been different sisNET flavors for different network commodities: electric, heat, gas, water, wastewater and multi-utility. Their pricings were and are related to their network types and if you can edit more than one network type at the same time. sisNET Electric, Heat, and Gas are priced the same. sisNET Water and Wastewater have another price. sisNET Multi allows you to edit more than 1 network at a time and is therefore the most expensive.
With the release of Update 5 a new ProductID has been introduced that covers all 6 old sisNET flavors, including Multi. With the new ProductID, sisNET usage will be licensed and monitored with a so-called feature-string which indicates the network “domain”. The feature string will have 3 possible settings:
The license costs and SELECT costs of these licenses are identical to those of the corresponding old sisNET Products.
The advantage is that sisNET users who had a mix of electric, heat and gas licenses do not have to worry anymore about which license to use for any of these networks. They can all be done with the “energy” license. Similarly, sisNET users working with a mix of water and wastewater networks can now do both with the “water” license.
The distinction with the “multi” license remains, in that “energy” and “water” can handle only 1 network type at a time, whereas “multi” can handle multiple network types in the same sisNET session.
For a schematic overview see the table below:
Some notes to this:
When and how to apply the new sisNET ProductID
There are 2 environment variables which control which sisNET ProductID is being reported to the Bentley licensing server:
There are a number of aspects to be aware of:
Two minutes after the start of a sisNET session, the name of the product which is being logged to the Bentley license server is visible in the top bar of the sisNET window. See the example screenshots below:
Where to set the environment variables SISNET_LICENSE_PRODUCTS and SISNET_LICENSE_USE_FEATURESTRINGS
The location where you set these environment variables depends on the question if you want to open DGN files with the OpenUtilities sisNET PowerPlatform capabilities or not:
If you set these environment variables on an OS system level, you can differentiate between Windows users, if you set the variables on user level. (See screenshot below):