How to Borrow or Checkout an Altair License

One of the most frequent questions I receive in support is: “How do I borrow a license from my license Pool?”. Borrowing a license can be very important to ensure that you have access to your license for an extended time, it works by checking that license out of your company license pool. Borrowing a license can be useful when you are working offline, or when you are working on a project to ensure you always have access to the license. In today’s blog I am going to step you through the process of how to borrow a license.

Step 1: Open the Altair License Utility

The Altair license utility, is the license manager where we can monitor our license usage, authorize our licenses, and in this case borrow a license. Our first step is to open the Altair License utility from our Altair program directory. To access the license utility, open your Altair programs folder, and the utility should be near the top of the list, of your installed Altair programs (Figure 1). Note, I am running on a Windows machine, but the license utility will be installed on other supported operating systems.

Figure 1: Altair License Utility Location

Step 2: Borrow the License

Once you click on the icon it will load the Altair License Utility. With the utility open you can click on the borrowing tab, as seen below in Figure 2. You will see on this tab that currently no features are currently being borrowed.

Figure 2: Hosted License Location

You can specify how long you wish to specify the license by clicking on the hours drop down box as shown in Figure 2. Licenses can be borrowed for up to 14 days, in this instance I will specify 24 hours and then click on the Borrow icon. After doing this the borrow mode display pops up immediately, as shown in Figure 3. I can now open the Altair simulation tools I wish to borrow, by simply opening up the Altair program. In my case I want to checkout a license of HyperMesh, so I will open up HyperMesh.

Figure 3: Start Borrow Mode

After HyperMesh opens, I can now click on the end borrowing mode button (Figure 4) to borrow the HyperMesh license.

Figure 4: End Borrow Mode

Step 3: Confirm Altair License is Borrowed

After exiting borrow mode, at this point our HyperMesh license is successfully borrowed from our license pool. I can do a quick check of this by opening my Altair license utility and clicking on the borrow tab (Figure 5). As you can see in Figure 5, it will indicate the license that is being borrowed, and when that license will expire. Since the license is now being borrowed, I can now run HyperMesh without interruption or offline if I choose. I will not lose the ability to run HyperMesh during this time period, because my license is borrowed.

Figure 5: Borrowed License Shown in Altair License Utility

Step 4: Return Borrowed Altair License

When you borrow an Altair license, it asks you how long you wish to borrow the license for. In our case we specified 24 hours. At the conclusion of those 24 hours, the license borrowing period would automatically end. However, there is an option to return the license earlier if you wish to do that. The process to do that involves you opening the Altair license utility, and then hitting the icon, Return All, (Figure 6) on the borrowing tab.

Figure 6: Borrowed License Shown in Altair License Utility

After clicking on the return all Icon, the utility will automatically check that license back into your company license pool, and you will see a completion box show up indicating that the licenses have successfully been returned.

As you can see the process to borrow your Altair licenses is very easy! For more information on Altair please reach out to us here at TrueInsight, and we will be happy to answer any questions you may have.