CTC Floating License Manager Guide
CTC Suites Installation and Configuration
February 27, 2023
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Contents
General Security Requirements Summary ........................................................................................................................... 3
General Licensing Information............................................................................................................................................. 3
Network Licensing ............................................................................................................................................................... 3
Network Server Path ....................................................................................................................................................... 5
Floating License Server Installation ..................................................................................................................................... 6
Floating License Server Overview ....................................................................................................................................... 6
License Server Installation Process ..................................................................................................................................... 6
Floating License Server Tools ............................................................................................................................................ 10
CTC License Server Web Application ................................................................................................................................. 11
Accessing the License Server Web Application ................................................................................................................. 11
First Time Usage ................................................................................................................................................................ 12
Viewing Purchased and Available Licenses ....................................................................................................................... 13
Viewing Licenses that are Currently in Use ....................................................................................................................... 14
Viewing License Usage History .......................................................................................................................................... 15
Using the Options File to do things like Reserve Licenses ................................................................................................ 15
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General Security Requirements Summary
The installation program must be run by someone who is logged in with administrative privileges on the computer to
which the software is being installed.
At a minimum, license servers must have firewall TCP ports 5052 and 5053 open in order for the workstations to be able
to successfully check-out and check-in network floating licenses. TCP port 5054 must also be open if it is desirable to
remotely access the web application that is used for monitoring and managing license usage.
The license server software is available for only for 64-bit Windows operating systems. Only 64-bit workstation clients
are supported.
General Licensing Information
The free tools have light background colors on the ribbon button icons, and have no licensing requirements. The tools
with dark background colors on the ribbon button icons do require licensing, but are available for a free trial.
Unless the licensing is pre-configured during installation (see below), the first time a user launches one of the tools that
require licensing they will see the Product and License Information dialog, which will ask them to select their licensing
type.
As this guide is in regards to network floating licenses, that is what we’ll focus on.
Network Licensing
“Network” licenses, which are also referred to as “floating network licenses” allow multiple users to share licenses. For
example, if you have 20 users but only a maximum of 5 of those 20 need to use the software at the same time, you may
choose to purchase only 5 network licenses.
To facilitate this, special software needs to be installed on a computer to manage the licenses. That computer becomes
the license server computer.
When the end user is running an add-in tool that uses network floating licenses, they must have a network connection
to the license server and the software will automatically ‘check out’ a license from the license server when the tool
starts up. When the user shuts down the tool, the license is automatically returned (‘checked in’) to the license server.
Only the maximum number of licenses purchased for a software product can be checked out at the same time. When
one extra user tries to run the software, they are informed that no floating licenses are available and they will have to
try to run the software again later after another user has closed a tool and their license is checked back in to the license
server.
Licenses acquired for a version of a CTC product will be available for users of that version of the product as well as for
users of older versions of the product. For example, if there are 10 floating licenses for “BIM Project Suite 2023” then
users running “BIM Project Suite” for any version up to 2023 can all get licenses from that pool. This can make it easier
to determine how many total licenses are needed.
A user never uses up more than one license for a product while on a single computer. For example, if the user has Revit
2022 running and starts a tool that checks out a license for “BIM Project Suite” from the license server, and while that
tool is running they start up another Revit session – even for a different version of Revit – and launch another tool from
the same suite, only 1 license will be considered in use by that user and computer combination. The license is not
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returned to the server until all instances of the tools from that suite have been shut down for all instances of Revit that
are running on that computer.
If, however, the user leaves the tool running which has checked out a license and they go to another computer and start
up another licensed tool for the same product, then another license will be checked out on that second computer. So
licenses are specific to the combination of user, computer and CTC product.
A user may “borrow” a license from the server for a fixed number of days, unless this feature has been disabled by an
administrator (see below). When a license is borrowed, it is temporarily locked to the computer of the user that
borrowed the license. This allows that user to use the software when not connected to the company network, which
can be useful, for example, if they are leaving to go on a business trip. However, it also temporarily removes one of the
available floating licenses for all the remaining users in the office to share.
The license will automatically be available again on the license server even if the user who borrowed it doesn’t connect
to the license server after the period in which it was borrowed comes to an end. The license will stop working on their
computer after the period in which it was borrowed comes to an end, even if they don’t connect to the license server.
IMPORTANT: Using network floating licenses on a remote workstation which is using a software VPN connection to
the company network is NOT recommended. This typically includes workstations that need to start up VPN client
software in order to connect to the company network. Because software VPN connections are generally less reliable,
the quality of maintaining the license after starting the software is in jeopardy and cannot be ensured. If the remote
workstation is to use network floating licenses, then a hardware VPN connection is strongly recommended. If a
hardware VPN connection is not available, the remote workstation should use a borrowed license instead.
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Network Server Path
The Network Server Path value in the Product and License Information dialog is a value that must be provided to the
Revit user, or configured on the workstation by the system administrator who installs and configures one or more
license servers. Installing the license server software is discussed in the next section.
In most cases the Network Server Path value is simply the name (or TCP/IP address) of the server on which the
floating network licensing service software has been installed.
The user guide that comes with the suite contains a section which discusses how the licensing works for the user,
including going into more detail about the use of the Product and License Information dialog.
The section in the suite installation and configuration guide called “Controlling Licensing Settings” explains in detail how
license configuration settings are stored in a file on the workstations, and how they can be modified after the suite has
previously been configured for licensing.
The CTC Express Tools suite system allows the client workstations to be installed and also configured for licensing
silently, using a variety of methods, including command-line parameters provided to the MSI installer packages.
This is explained in detail in each suite’s Installation and Configuration Guide.
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Floating License Server Installation
Floating License Server Overview
In order to support a floating network license environment, at least one computer must be configured as a license
server. It is strongly recommended to set up the floating license server on a computer that uses a server-class Windows
operating system, but the license server software can be successfully configured on a computer that uses a workstation-
class operating system.
A 64-bit versions of the license server software is available:
• CTCLicenseServerSetup_64-bit.msi
This setup must be run by someone with administrative privileges on the license server computer. When the setup is
run, a Windows service will be configured for serving licenses. This service also includes a web application which can be
used for managing licenses, such as for seeing how many licenses of a suite are currently in use.
The web server software for the web application is embedded into the windows service, and does not require Internet
Information Services to be installed, nor should it conflict with other web server software.
IMPORTANT: At a minimum, firewall TCP ports 5052 and 5053 on the server computer and on the Revit
workstations must be open for the license server service to communicate with the workstations. To access the web
application for managing licenses from another computer, firewall TCP port 5054 must also be open.
License Server Installation Process
When the setup is launched, an introductory screen is displayed:
Clicking on the “Next” button will display a software license agreement screen:
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After reading and agreeing, clicking the “Next” button will display a confirmation screen:
If User Account Control is turned on, you may need to explicitly confirm that you want to install the software.
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During the installation, a screen like this showing the installation progress will be visible:
Once this screen completes and the installation is successful, two screens will appear.
First:
Just click the “Finish” button on this screen.
Second:
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This screen contains very important information that needs to be provided to your CTC representative so that a license
file can be generated for this license server computer.
The license file to be provided by CTC will contain information required for this computer to properly serve the licenses
for the products that have been purchased.
You may wish to use the “Copy This Information to the Clipboard” button so that it can more easily and accurately be
sent to your CTC representative, who can then use this information to generate a license file for this computer.
The “Open Folder…” button will launch Windows Explorer and open the folder into which the license file must be placed.
This also happens to be the folder where the Windows service was installed.
The “Visit this license server’s management site” link will open the default web browser on this computer to the web
site that allows managing the floating licenses. This will be discussed in greater detail in a later section of this document.
This dialog may be closed before the license file is received, because (as will be discussed in the next section) a shortcut
is provided to make it easy to get back to this information at any time.
Once the installation is complete, if you visit the Services list in the Server Manager tool, you should see that the CTC
Network License Server Windows service has been installed and started automatically:
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If for any reason the CTC Network License Server service doesn't appear in the list, scripts can be found in the
installation folder for "installing" or "uninstalling" the Windows service itself. Running the installation script may
provide more information about why the setup program could not add the service to the services list.
Floating License Server Tools
After installing the floating license server software, the following tools are available from the Start menu:
The “CTC License Server Information Viewer” Start Menu button launches the same dialog that was seen at the end of
the setup:
The “CTC License Server Web Manager” button on the Start menu launches the web application that is used for
managing licenses, and is discussed in the next section.
The other two commands can be used to easily stop or start the CTC Network License Server Windows service.
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CTC License Server Web Application
Accessing the License Server Web Application
A web browser-based interface exists for managing licenses on the License Server. This can easily be accessed using the
“CTC License Server Web Manager” icon that is added to the Start menu during the installation of the license server
software.
The address of this web site will be: http://<server name>:5054
or, if you are logged into the server already: http://localhost:5054
The CTC network floating licensing engine is based on the Reprise License Manager, which is also what drives the web
application. When opened, the initial screen looks like this:
In this document only a limited set of the most commonly used features available in this management tool will be
explored. For full documentation on this licensing engine, click on the “RLM Manual…” button near the bottom of the
navigation buttons on the left.
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First Time Usage
The first button, “Status” will likely be the starting point most of the time.
When initially installed, and before a license file from CTC is copied to the installation folder, clicking the “Status” button
shows a screen like this:
Note that it says “No ISV servers running” near the bottom of the main information area. CTC is an “ISV” for this
licensing engine. The CTC ISV server cannot run until the license file generated by CTC is installed on the server.
Once the license file is received from CTC, it needs to be placed in the installation folder. The easiest way to get to the
installation folder is to use the Start menu to run the “License Server Information Viewer” program, and then click on
the “Open Folder…” button, which will open Windows Explorer to the correct folder.
This folder will usually be: C:\Program Files\CTC Software\CTC Network License Server (64-bit)
Once a new or updated license file from CTC has been copied to the installation folder on the
license server, click the “Reread/Restart Servers” button on the left, then click the
“REREAD/RESTART” button in the middle of the screen:
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Viewing Purchased and Available Licenses
Once the CTC license file has been copied to the installation folder and read into the license manager, if the “Status”
button is clicked, the “ctc_inc” ISV Server will appear at the bottom of the screen:
When the “ctc_inc” button is clicked in the “Server Status” column, the information about purchased licenses and their
statuses is displayed. The columns of most interest are highlighted here:
In this example there are 10 floating licenses purchased for each of the suite products for Revit 2015, and no users
happen to be using any of them (none are “inuse”).
NOTE: Users with versions of these products running on older versions of Revit, for example BIM Manager Suite™
running in Revit 2013, will also be able to draw licenses from this same pool for the Revit 2015 version of the product.
So only the total number of licenses needed by all users up to the version licensed (“Ver” column) needs to be known
and taken into consideration when determining how many licenses are needed.
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Viewing Licenses that are Currently in Use
As seen in the previous image, the list of licenses purchased and in use can be seen on the status screen.
If, for example, a user starts up a tool in the suite, we might see the following in this status list:
Notice that one license is now in use. By clicking on the associated “usage…” button, we can see who is using that
license:
The “user” is the user’s login name, the “host” is the name of the computer they are using.
The CTC license files that are generated define things such that regardless of how many licensed tools in the suite are
running at the same time by a single user on one computer, even in different versions of Revit simultaneously, only
one network license is considered “in use” by the server per combination of user, computer and product.
For example, the user could have the window open for two licensed tools in the suite, and open another licensed tool in
the suite at the same time.
In that case, we would still see this on the License Pool Status screen:
But on the usage screen we would see three entries for this user, like this:
So even though only one license is considered “in use,” there are three instances of that single license running on the
workstation at the same time.
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When the last tool is shut down, the license is returned to the pool for another user to be able to use.
In the case where a user is borrowing a license, the status screen looks like this:
When clicking on the “usage” button, the next screen looks like this:
In this example, the user has borrowed a license until midnight on July 12th. That is to say, the license is borrowed
through the end of the day on July 11th. As soon as the clock ticks over to July 12th, the server will report the license as
having been returned to the server and the workstation will no longer use the borrowed license and must contact the
server again to get a regular floating license the next time the software is to be used.
Viewing License Usage History
Although turned off by default in the RLM licensing engine, the logging of detailed license usage over time is available in
the engine. Please see this article for more details:
http://www.reprisesoftware.com/blog/2011/03/how-to-produce-rlm-report-logs/
Using the Options File to do things like Reserve Licenses
The licensing engine allows you to do things like reserve licenses for one or more users. This allows scenarios where 5
licenses are purchased but 1 is kept in reserve for a specific user, who is always allowed to get one license. However,
this reduces to 4 the number of licenses that are available for everyone else.
Other rules can be set up to do things like prevent one or more specific users from being able to get a license.
A default options file (ctc_inc.opt) is provided when the server software is installed. It can be edited manually using a
text editor such as Notepad, or it can be edited from within the web user interface.
IMPORTANT: Whenever the options file is edited, the license information for the “ctc_inc” ISV must be re-read for it
to take effect. An example of this is shown below.
IMPORTANT: For full documentation on all of the options file settings available, please visit:
http://www.reprisesoftware.com/RLM_Enduser.html and click on “The ISV Options File” in the table of contents.
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To edit the options file in the web user interface, click on the “Status” button on the left, and then click on the “ctc_inc”
button in the OPTIONS column:
This is what the editor looks like with the default Options file:
Although the RESERVE lines are commented out by default, this example shows how to reserve a license for 1 specific
user for the CTC BIM Project Suite product, and for two specific users for the CTC BIM Manager Suite product.
If these two items are uncommented (the “#” is removed from the front of their lines), then the “Update Options”
button is clicked, and then back on the general status screen the ctc_inc ISV license is re-read:
When clicking on the “Server Status” button:
