Editor's note: This post reflects the licensing policy which operated until October 2021. If you have an active license bought before that time, it falls under the conditions described in this post. If your license was purchased after October 2021 or you are planning to purchase one, please see the current licensing guide in the updated post.
Great to have you here! We can’t help but cherish the hope that you are thinking about an official CAD Exchanger GUI usership. No pressure whatsoever, let’s just go through the ins and outs of license options.
There are single-user and team licenses available. Below we will briefly describe each of them.
Single user
If we are talking about personal use or a small business with less than five users, single-user licenses are what you need. These types of licenses are issued for use by a single person and are tied to a piece of network hardware via its MAC address. That is, one user on one PC — one serial number. While installing, you may either trust automatic settings or contact support to obtain a key for a specific network device for manual activation. The latter is relevant if the computer CAD Exchanger will be used on is behind a strict firewall or has no Internet access at all.
Subscription license
CAD Exchanger GUI subscription is purchased for 12 months and can be renewed annually. It is a full, yet temporary, pack with all new updates included (typically, four software releases — once a quarter). You may either renew your subscription or deal without it and get back whenever your project demands.
In case you are working on a temporary project, involving CAD data exchange or simply have no room for higher upfront payments, a subscription license is a smart choice.
Perpetual license
By purchasing a perpetual license, you get life-long access to CAD Exchanger GUI with a 12-month updates package and can update to new versions released within a year after purchase for free.
Perpetual licenses will be a good fit for those who deal with 3D CAD data on a regular basis and would like to save time firing a full-blown CAD system every time the need occurs.
Once your year of access to updates expires you can continue using the version you ended up on indefinitely, or you can purchase another year of updates for an extra incremental small fee (about 25% of the full license). We always recommend the second option in order to stay tuned for regular enhancements, bug fixes, new formats, and features. If you drop maintenance, you can resume it later, but that will be subject to the reinstatement fee. So if you plan to use CAD Exchanger regularly and to minimize license fees, then keeping active maintenance is the way to go.
Team users
In the case of a large staff in need of CAD Exchanger, it is reasonable to select one of the team license options. It implies a one-time fee for a single serial number that can be used by multiple employees.
Team licenses are similar to the single-user ones as regards the updates access. After the first year, they can be complemented with the update pack for the additional annual fee, which includes 12-month maintenance.
Site license
The site license is tied to the Active Directory domain and enables access to all the PCs belonging to it. It means that everyone in the domain is able to install CAD Exchanger on their local machines and simultaneously use it. Naturally, this option is available on Windows only.
Before making a purchase we strongly recommend that you double-check with your system administrator that you have an Active Directory domain in place. Also, make sure that this domain is recognized in CAD Exchanger.
Floating license
A floating licensing is tied to the server via its MAC address and allows the software to be used on any PC in your local network or VPN. To enable the application, the system administrator needs to install a license server that manages end-user licenses. Simultaneous use of the software is limited by the concurrent usage count allowed by the purchased licenses. To let one more user run the software, any of the current users need to close the program and thus release the license.
This type of license is available on Windows only and running a license server is possible only on Windows physical machines.
We are proud to have both individual users and large companies among our customers. And we never stop trying to outdo ourselves in improving the experience of each of them. So whether you are a freelance engineer or the one seeking for an enterprise solution, one of these four options could be exactly what you need.