Chapter 5 - Setting up Supporting Services

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Overview Overview
Preparing for Supporting Services Preparing for Supporting Services
Methodologies Methodologies
Summary Summary

Overview

This chapter discusses three services you may wish to set up to support CATIA®:

  • License Use Management (LUM) allows administrators to track the licensing of applications in the enterprise and ensure legality. This is IBM software that is used by vendors to ensure that customers have purchased sufficient licenses for their organization.

  • Printers and plotters are essential in most design departments for producing hardcopy. CATIA includes the 3D PLM environment for advanced printing functionality.

  • Collaboration software helps a user base that is geographically distributed to overcome the distances that separate them. Video conferencing software, for example, can enable meetings to take place without travel expenses being incurred.

As in previous chapters, the content in this chapter has been divided into two sections. Use the first section, “Preparing for Supporting Services,” to plan how you will set up these services. For license management, this document discusses the use of LUM. The discussion of printing services describes how to use a feature provided by CATIA that enables the printing of long sheets. The collaboration services discussion explains the increasing importance of these services and describes the available tools.

The second section, “Methodologies," offers guidance to the persons carrying out the migration by providing example procedures that illustrate the administration tasks to be completed.

Preparing for Supporting Services

The management of licenses and printers is essential for most, if not all, CATIA implementations. Collaboration services are optional, but extremely useful when your design department is not located at a single site.

License Management

The following sections describe license management.

Using LUM

License Use Management Runtime is part of IBM License Use Management, a combination of tools for software asset protection. The LUM tools enable software vendors and their customers to ensure that customers comply with the terms and conditions of license agreements. They check compliance through runtime monitoring of the usage of software assets. LUM can be used to ensure you are running CATIA legally.

Vendors deliver licenses to customers in the form of a license password. The password contains encrypted terms of the usage of the software product, including the following:

  • The number of licenses or concurrent copies of the product the customer can use.

  • The expiration date of the licenses.

  • The license type.

Vendors can supply licenses in two forms: nodelocked licenses or network licenses.

A nodelocked license is a license for a specified workstation (node). It is stored on the specified workstation and the license-enabled product will only run on that workstation. Vendors typically use nodelocked licenses for standalone applications, rather than for client/server applications. It has two license-enabling models: non-runtime-based and runtime-based. If a vendor chooses non-runtime-based enabling, the license-enabled product itself, rather than License Use Management Runtime, manages the use of the nodelocked license. The password for such a product is stored in a nodelock file. When you start the application, it checks the nodelock file to ensure that a valid license is available.

A network license is a license stored on a server that can be used by any client workstation. Many License Use Management Runtime clients can share the licenses for enabled products. The licenses are stored on one or more network license servers. Each client workstation must be connected to a server. When the user at a client starts a licensed program, License Use Management Runtime at the license server determines whether a license is available. Vendors can enable their products to use the following kinds of network licenses:

  • Concurrent licenses

  • Reservable licenses

  • Use-once licenses

  • Per-server/per-seat licenses

Concurrent Licenses

A concurrent license is a network license that can be temporarily granted to run the licensed application on a client. When the product is running, that license remains unavailable to other users of the product. When the product stops running, the license is returned to the server, where it becomes available to other users.

Concurrent licenses allow as many users to run a licensed application simultaneously as there are valid licenses for the product available from the network license servers in your licensing environment.

Managing Licenses

License Use Management Runtime includes the basic license tool. This tool manages both nodelocked and network licenses. The basic license tool has a graphical user interface (GUI) and a command line interface.

The basic license tool enables the user to do the following:

  • Add licenses to or delete licenses from the server database.

  • Display information about the licenses installed.

  • Distribute the licenses among the license servers available on the network.

  • Reserve licenses for the exclusive use of certain users.

  • Generate reports on license usage and server events.

License Use Management benefits software vendors by enabling them to do the following:

  • Ensure that customers use software licenses within entitled limits.

  • Base product prices on actual usage.

  • Protect intellectual property from unauthorized use.

  • Increase overall revenue as customers acquire all the licenses they need.

  • Distribute software for a trial period with trial licenses that can be replaced by production licenses, thus minimizing distribution cost.

Printer / Plotter Configuration

In order to create hard copies of your work in CATIA V5, it is important to install one or more printers or plotters. If you wish to perform simple Windows printing, such as that used by Word and other applications, you can use the Add Printer Wizard in the Windows Printers folder. However, if you use the CATIA 3D PLM environment, CATIA can configure the printer specifically for this.

See the “Methodologies” section in this chapter for an outline of this process.

Collaboration

With the advent of the global corporation, it is becoming increasingly important for business units at different locations to work together and quickly solve problems as a team. To sustain this way of working, collaboration software is increasingly used in organizations to identify, incorporate, and coordinate the work of partners and suppliers across the globe.

In the past, most product design activities were performed in centralized engineering departments, often with people seated side-by-side working on the same projects. Communication was direct, and problems could be resolved quickly. This type of co-located working arrangement is quickly disappearing. Production facilities are often in different locations than those of designers, and the increased use of outsourcing and supply chains further scatters people and resources.

Communications must now support designers in different locations working collaboratively throughout the product development cycle, from concept through manufacturing and support. While e-mail, fax, and voicemail are valuable components of the newer office environment, all these make poor substitutes for simultaneous real-time collaboration. Face-to-face meetings necessitate costly and time-consuming travel. Thus, for distributed product development to be practical, new ways of sharing information must be used.

Contributions by those outside the design or engineering departments may be severely limited in this type of communication. They may not have the CAD software or the training to use it. Increasingly, more and more collaborative software packages are allowing users to access models from their personal computers, without the use of expensive CAD workstations. They can view, measure, analyze, and electronically mark up both two-dimensional and three-dimensional designs.

Collaborative tools and processes based on shared product information help companies overcome these problems by providing an online, interactive, collaborative design review and problem resolution environment to increase levels of communication throughout the design process.

On a much larger scale, the use of collaboration technologies helps in improving product quality, speeding communication, lowering costs, and accelerating work processes. Product quality improves by bringing together people involved in the decision process and providing faster communication. Also, costs can be reduced significantly by eliminating travel expenses and the lost productivity associated with frequent meetings. Most important, time is saved by allowing people to resolve problems quickly.

For collaboration, Windows provides the Microsoft NetMeeting® tool along with the operating system. Thus companies need not invest in other collaborative technologies. NetMeeting works with the Remote Desktop Protocol. It allows users to share applications and use a whiteboard to sketch, chat, and send files to other users using the Internet or Intranet. A detailed description of the setup of NetMeeting is given in the “Methodologies” section of this chapter.

Other collaboration tools widely used in the industry include Webex, E-Vis from EDS, WiseVIEW from Samsung SDS, vCollab from Virtual E3D, AutoVue from Cimmetry and 3DView from Landmark Graphics.

A comparison table of popular collaboration tools is given below to help you select the most appropriate package for your needs:

Table 5.1 Popular Collaboration Tools

Features

E-Vis

Webex

WiseVIEW

VCollab

3D View

AutoVue

Markup

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Real-time Sectioning

N

NA

Y

Y

Y

Y

Digital Mock Up

NA

NA

Y

Y

NA

NA

Assembly Simulation

Y

Y

Y

Y

NA

Y

Crash Analysis

NA

NA

NA

Y

NA

NA

Desktop Sharing

Y

Y

N

NA

Y

NA

Internet / Intranet

Both

Internet

Both

Both

Both

Internet

CAD Software Supported

Data needs to be translated to .jt format

NA

CATIA, UG, Parasolid XT files, IGES and STEP

CATIA, UG, IDEAS, PRO/E, Solid Works, 3D Studio Max

CATIA, PRO/E, UG, SDRC, Solid Works, Autodesk, Solid Edge, STEP, IGS, STL, VDA, VRML, ISO G-CODE, DXF, DWG, ACIS-SAT, 3D Studio

CATIA, PRO/E, UG, Mechanical Desktop, Autodesk Inventor, Solid Designer, Solid Edge, Solid Works, IGES, STEP, STL, VRML, VDA-FS

Supports Microsoft Suite of Products

Developed

on .NET

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Methodologies

License Management

License management involves setting up of the license and configuring it.

License Use Management (LUM) Setup

To install LUM, follow these steps:

  1. Run the Arkwin465.exe from the CD-ROM. The LUM Installation Wizard appears.

  2. Click Next.

  3. Select License Agreement and click Next.

  4. Click Next in the readme wizard.

  5. Enter User Name and Organization and click Next.

  6. Select the Set Up type as Complete and click Next.

  7. Click Install.

  8. Click Finish.

LUM Configuration

To configure License Use Management, follow these steps:

  1. From the Start menu, point to Programs, point to License Use Runtime, and click Configuration Tool.

  2. Select Network License Client.

  3. Click Settings and then press the cat0502 key.

    cat0501

  4. Enter the IP Address or name of the license server in the Name box and click Add.

  5. The license server details are displayed. Exit the tool and click Yes to save your changes.

Printer/Plotter Configuration

The following procedure allows the user to configure the 3D PLM Printer/Plotter for CATIA V5R9 and later.

The plotter should have been added prior to configuring these settings.

1. From the File menu, select Printer Setup and double-click Add Printer.

2. Select the option 3D PLM Printer and click OK.

3. In the Name box in the Printer Properties window, enter the name of the printer/plotter (for example, 3D PLM PRINTER).

4. Select the driver from the drop down box.

5. In the Paper Format drop-down list, select the maximum.

6. In the Submission Scripts box, enter the path and name for the output file In the Output File Name box.

7. In the Queue Name drop-down list, select the Printer/Plotter.

8. Click OK. Now the Printer/Plotter will be added and it can be seen in the Printer Setup window.

9. To change any other setting, right-click the name of the Printer/Plotter to open the Printer Properties window, and then select Configure to configure it.

10. When you are done configuring, Click OK. To print a document, select Print from the File menu.

Collaboration

The following procedure describes the configuration of Microsoft NetMeeting®, a video, audio, and data conferencing application. NetMeeting ships with Windows and is thus a popular solution.

To use the application sharing functionality, follow these steps:

  1. From the Start menu, click Settings, click Control Panel, and then double-click Display.

  2. Click the Advanced button in the Display Properties dialog box.

  3. On the Troubleshooting tab, reduce the Hardware acceleration value to None.

Installation Validation

The following section explains installation validation.

License Use Management

To determine whether License Use Management Runtime is already installed on the workstation, refer to the following file:

C:\ifor\ls\conf\runver

Open this file through any text editor. This file identifies the version of LUM installed on the system.

To check if the license servers have been added to LUM, use the following steps:

  1. From the Start menu, click Programs, click License Use, click Runtime, and then click Configuration Tool.

  2. Select the Direct binding tab.

  3. Make sure all the license servers are visible in the Servers box.

  4. If they are not all visible, add the servers through the Server Configuration Info box by supplying the necessary details and clicking the <<Add button.

  5. To view information about the licenses installed, from the Start menu, click Programs, click License Use Runtime, and then click Basic License Tool.

Double-click any license to get the details about that license.

Summary

Your organization can use License Use Management (LUM) to track software usage and ensure that at no time are you operating illegally. In a large organization, this task can be very difficult without such tools.

This chapter has also discussed the complicated issue of printer/plotter configuration.

Disclaimer and Copyright Information

CATIA is a registered trademark of Dassault Systemes SA. The names of other actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.