KB: Prevent multiple license seats being used on one installation instance
Created: June 18, 2022 | Updated: March 08, 2024
Altium Designer
Starting in version: 18
Up to Current
[Why] Prevent multiple license seats being used on one installation instance [What] The License Management tab may show more than one license seat being used. If not explicitly by inadvertent user operation, it may be due to Automatic Leasing setup of License Allocation in Dashboard. [How] First, make sure you have no other Altium Designer instance opened either in a different machine or in the same machine. Also, the problem may be attributed to having multiple network adapters active which should be disabled if unused. Try releasing all license seats used, close Altium and then re-open to see if that resolve the issue. Have your group admin revisit Licese Allocation as a preventive measure.
Solution Details
You may have "used" a license without realizing there was a license already in use. It is possible to use more than one license. First, release all licenses, close Altium and then re-open Altium to see if that resolves the issue.There are other reasons this can happen.
This issue could be related to License Allocation Assignments.
If you have multiple licenses, and more than one of them is set to "Automatic leasing" in the Options section of a License Allocation assignment, try unchecking this check box for all allocation assignments.
If you have created a license allocation assignment that includes multiple licenses, try removing this assignment and set up individual assignments for each license.
Make sure the total number of seats allocated for all the license allocation assignments does not exceed the total number of seats available for the license. It is also important that a user is not included in more than one group such that the allocations result in the user seeing the same license twice in their License Management screen.
Here is a Knowledge Base article that should refresh your recollection on working with license allocations/assignments (let us know if you need help with this):
https://www.altium.com/documentation/knowledge-base/altium-designer/license-allocation-assignment
This issue could be related to already using a license on a different computer. You are able to release your own license remotely from their current session. This documentation should help:
https://www.altium.com/documentation/altium-designer/on-demand-licensing#!releasing-a-license-remotely
This issue could be related to the computer having multiple active network adapters. Try disabling any unneeded network adapters. Although written for a different purpose, this Knowledge Base article has a good description (with images) on how to do this:
https://www.altium.com/documentation/knowledge-base/altium-designer/nothing-happens-when-trying-to-use-a-license
If you are using a private license server, this issue could be related to having more than one account for the user on the issuing server. This is especially true if you manually created an account on the server and also have the server set (default) to automatic user creation. If your server is using this default, you can delete the user's accounts and let a new on be created when they attempt to re-connect.