Creo parametric license selection in launch .bat file

When you start up Creo, it utilizes a file, located in something like

C:\Program Files\Creo 9.0.9.0\Parametric\bin

There’s a line in that file that specifies the different licenses of Creo that are available. It looks something like:

ENV=CREOPMA_FEATURE_NAME=PROE_EssentialsI PROE_DesignEss ()

The list of licenses is all the ones you want people to be able to use. The interesting thing about this is that the order of these licenses specifies the preference as to which to take first. For example, for the line above, PROE_EssentialsI is the license you’ll get, until those are all being used. Once the PROE_EssentialsI licenses are all taken, PROE_DesignEss licenses will be used. If all the licenses are taken, the user is out of luck.

An interesting thing that isn’t obvious is that if you have multiple .psf files in the aforementioned directory, when you start up Creo it will present you with a menu of choices as to which option you wish. For example, I have a separate .psf that will pull the Manufacturing license when chosen. This way the general user doesn’t inadvertantly take the Manufacturing license, which is a valuable scarce resource, when they are only doing normal CAD work.

So, for your situation, if you’ve got a lot of other “standard” licenses, I’d have three .psf files. One for all the standard licenses, which you make the default, one for the ...T3 and one for the ...T2 licenses and let the user choose which. If you have users that will never use the ...T2 and ...T3 licenses, they could just have one .psf file that calls for the standard licenses and not have to make any sort of choice at all.

Create something like this on your bin directory

Launching parametric.bat you will see something like below image

Yeah, that’s similar to what I’ve got. There’s a DESC= line in the .psf that gives the text that will be shown in the menu for each option. It defaults to the file name, I suppose, but I’ve got things like “Creo Parametric (Default)”, “Creo with Manufacturing”, etc. They’re presented to the user in alphabetical order.

You guys have a lot of options. That’s one heck of a lot of .psf files. Must be fun if your licensing ever changes or PTC renames the license packages.

Actually, when we switched from perpetual licenses to subscription licenses, it took a while to recreate the list with the new license packages