Altium Designer Licensing System

Altium Designer provides a streamlined licensing system, enabling you to get licensed and up-and-running with your Altium Designer Software in a timely and efficient manner. The system offers various licensing types to meet, and suit, your licensing needs. This includes web-based, on-demand licensing. Tightly integrated with customer accounts through the Altium portal, web-based on-demand license management allows a license to be used on any computer without the need to move license files or activate on each machine. This provides a global floating license capability – within the geographic scope of your license and the conditions set out in the EULA – without needing to implement your own server.

License Types

Main articles: Using an On-Demand License, Using a Standalone License, Using a Private Server License

The Altium Designer licensing system features three distinct license types:

• On-Demand – client-side license acquisition is administered by an Altium managed server. There are two 'modes' when using a seat of an On-Demand license:
  • On-Demand – a seat of an On-Demand license acquired by any client computer, only while you are signed in to your account. When you sign out, the seat is released so that another user can acquire it.
  • Roaming – a seat of an On-Demand license acquired for a specified time. In this mode, you can sign out and work offline, in essence roaming freely with your acquired seat
• Standalone – client-side license acquisition is managed by the user themself through use of a licensing file (*.alf). This file can be saved, copied and backed-up as required. The .alf file is reusable on a home computer (in accordance with the EULA) simply by copying the file to a specific folder on that computer and then adding the file as part of Standalone License Configuration.
• Private Server – client-side license acquisition is administered by a user-managed server. Your administrator sets up a Private License Server to access and use Private Server licenses. Once the license is in use on the server, that server will then serve the license to local computers. Users on the local network do not need to sign in to their Altium accounts to acquire the seats from the Private License Server.

License Availability, Selection and Configuration

License configuration and selection is performed from Altium Designer's Home - Admin page (DXP » My Account). To perform On-Demand license-related activities you must be signed in, sign-in to your Altium account to view and select On-Demand licenses available to you. Note that you do not need to be signed in to add a Standalone license file or connect to your Private License Server and use a seat from any of the associated Private Server licenses made available to you by your network administrator.

Whether using an On-Demand license, Standalone license, or Private Server license, the Available Licenses region of the page will automatically present the specific licenses available to you. Choose the license that you want to use and then click on the applicable command (eg, Use, Roam, Reconnect to private license server), depending on the type of license and how you want to use it.

License Management is performed in the Home - Admin page. Once you have signed in, available On-Demand licenses will be available.

License Attributes

Your Altium Designer license defines the conditions under which your right to use the software can be exercised and has the following key attributes:

• Start and End dates or duration
• The Permission set of a given license defines which features of the software the license owner can use. Permission sets are associated with software major versions.
• The License usage contractually defines the environment in which, and the purpose for which, the license can be used.
• The License type defines the relationship between the license and the hardware on which the right to use the software can be exercised.
• The User count determines the number of seats on the license that may be in use at any one time.

Browser-Based License Management

Main article: AltiumLive - Dashboard

The AltiumLive Dashboard is a dedicated area that allows administrators of an Organization's Altium account to manage the users, licenses and other assets associated to that account, as well as defining the Organization's profile – which can be made public, for viewing by other Organizations and their users, within the AltiumLive community.

Account management of any type should never feel burdensome. With the AltiumLive Dashboard, being able to manage all aspects of an Organization's account is both intuitive and expedient, and all from the one convenient location. The Dashboard will even notify of pending items requiring action, such as renewing that subscription that is about to expire – and enable renewal to be conducted right there-and-then, online and hassle free, allowing the Organization to remain licensed with continuous subscription and access to all the benefits that that entails.

To access the Dashboard, first ensure you are signed in to the AltiumLive community using your AltiumLive Account credentials. Once there, click on the Dashboard link at the top of the page.

Use the Dashboard to manage your account with Altium.

Why am I getting a Subscription Expired message in Altium Designer 10?

If your subscription is up to date but you see the "subscription expired" message in Altium Designer 10, please follow the instructions below to reactivate your license.

Standalone License

A Standalone license is local to the machine and although the license is updated for subscription in Altium's system, the .alf file on the local machine does not contain this updated subscription information. The license must therefore be reactivated to obtain a new .alf file containing this new subscription information.

From within Altium Designer:

1. Go to DXP » My Account.
2. Sign-in to your account using your AltiumLive account credentials.
3. select the Standalone license in the list of licenses, then click the Reactivate button beneath the listing.

From the AltiumLive Dashboard (Group Administrators only):

1. On the Licenses page, simply browse to the required license and access its detailed management page.
2. Click the Activate button.
3. The Activate License section will appear, from where you can select which version of Altium Designer the license is to be activated for. Once you have made your selection, simply click the OK button, the *.alf file will be saved to the default 'downloads' location specified for your browser.
4. Install the license onto the target computer that is running Altium Designer, as required and in accordance with the EULA. For a Standalone license, this is performed from the My Account page within Altium Designer (DXP » My Account) – see Adding a Standalone License File.

Private License Server

Again, Private Server license(s) are local to the machine and although the license is updated for subscription in Altium's system, the .alf file(s) on the local machine do not contain this updated subscription information. The license(s) must therefore be reactivated to obtain new .alf file(s) containing this new subscription information.

From within the Private License Server:

1. From within the Licensing dialog, click the Account Preferences button. In the dialog that appears, ensure that all entries for the Altium Account Management Servers are changed to 'portal2' (e.g. portal2.altium.com).
2. Click the Activate button and sign-in to your account using your AltiumLive account credentials.
3. In the Activate Licenses dialog that appears, select the relevant Private Server License entry and click the Activate License button.

From the AltiumLive Dashboard (Group Administrators only):

1. On the Licenses page, browse to the required license and click to access its detailed management page.
2. Click the Activate button.
3. The Activate License section will appear, from where you can select which version of Altium Designer the license is to be activated for. Remember, for a Private Server license, you can also nominate whether activation is for a Primary or Secondary Private License Server. Once you have made your selection, simply click the OK button, the *.alf files will be saved to the default 'downloads' location specified for your browser. Note: When activating a Private Server license, you must repeat the activation process for each supported release of Altium Designer that you wish the license to serve.
4. Once you have saved the required license file(s) you can then install the license(s) onto the target computer that is running the Private License Server, as required and in accordance with the EULA. For a Private Server license, this is performed from within the Licensing dialog – see Manually Adding Licenses to a Private License Server.
5. On the client machine running Altium Designer 10, click the Refresh button on the My Account page (DXP » My Account).