You will probably have to install the license server on another network conected system that is certified and when you install NX on the new system, you will have to direct the license path to the other server. This other server can be pretty much any type of system as long as you can install flex on it. It doesn't even have to be Windows.
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
NX Product Line
UGS Corp
Cypress, CA
Not only is NX not supported by UGS but you're going to have major issues with OpenGL since Vista isn't supporting OpenGL yet. Preliminary benchmarks are showing performance decreases of up to 50% when running Vista with most CAD softwares.
OK, I might as well post it here as well. This morning on our UGS sponsored BBS, I posted the following item in response to similar comment made there:
We're not sure what the 'intentions' were of the person (who is this 'Tom' guy anyway) who ran these 'tests', but we've got people looking it it. So far it appears that the test may have been run without first attempting to update any of the various device drivers, including the graphics drivers, which as you all know, would play a rather significant role in the performance of any CAD type package.
So, for the time being, I would suggest that you ignore this and other sites that may claim that they're testing CAD packages on Vista, and instead wait for the word from the software vendors themselves, and that of course would include UGS. When and if we certify Vista, you'll hear about through official channels and it will include any caveats and recommendations as we see as being appropriate and necessary.
Anyway, the bottom line is; please avoid speculating on what's going to happen with Vista until you hear something OFFICIAL from the parties involved, and that means Microsoft and the various software vendors themselves, and not some guy trying to sell you hardware or whatever it is that these guys do, OK?
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
NX Product Line
UGS Corp
Cypress, CA
Since I've posted this I've gotten some feedback on some of the testing that we're doing ourselves and also the reports that we've gotten from the various graphic card vendors (primarily NVIDIA and ATI) and it appears that with the proper drivers, that graphics performance on Vista will be indistinguishable from the same hardware configuration running Windows XP. It's seems that we were correct in assuming that the tests being conducted and reported on at such sites as 'Tom's Hardware' were most likely done using drivers that were not fully compatible with Vista and therefore the graphics cards appeared to have defaulted to the so-called software versus hardware acceleration and that is probably what caused the terrible performance reports for virtually all of the CAD systems, including NX, that they tested.
As for when will you get the official word on what we're certifying, that will take a bit more testing and work with the hardware/software vendors, but for now I wouldn't worry that this is going to somehow present a problem for us, or you, in the future.
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
NX Product Line
UGS Corp
Cypress, CA
Hi,
just my 2-cents coming from the occasional UG-user I am...
- Why would someone dive right now into the unknown galaxy of a MS' brand-new O.S., when it is hystorically well-known that it takes months if not years for a Microsoft's product to be fully "debugged"? Wouldn't it be better to wait just a little?
- Would a CAD-man really feel frustrated for not having the latest marvellous cascading shaded / transparent folders of Vista, or would he look at his CAD's GUI instead?
- Would any technical, professional, guy be more interested in wasting hundreds and hundreds of MB RAM (and thousands of processor's MFlops...) in a glittering O.S. interface (so, why not install M.U.S.E. immersive 3D interface on a PC ???), or would he be more interested in assigning these precious resources to his working program?
Personally, the only thing I save of Vista for professional work is the indexing / search functionality, copied (and badly copied, and late moreover...) from Mac OS-X "Tiger"...
Who said anything about diving right in? I'm simply running a test setup on a high end workstation. After doing Alpha, Beta and RC testing for over 25 years, I'm well aware of the historical problems with new O.S.'s.
I was just curious if there were any problems or changes to the way FlexLM works on Vista. My experience is that a lot of "unsupported" apps will work just fine on a new O.S.; the software companies just puts out a disclaimer because they aren't ready to support technical help. When I have time, I prefer to do my own testing.
I'm only a bit in grief with MS because I really don't think that an O.S. should need something like 500 or so MB RAM only to keep up... After all, in 32-bits versions they are still locked up with the impossibility of adressing more than 3GB, no?
My apologies for the mis-information (of sorts) about the preliminary tests.....that will be the last time I take Tom's words as being of any real value. Obviously the dude has issues with Micro$oft.
I'm glad to hear that you are following standard procedure: if you don't like the test results, slam the tester!
Kidding aside, I did see the article but didn't think much of it for a few reasons:
1) Driver support on Vista is not very robust yet. I hear OpenGL support is spotty at best, and to the best of my knowledge that is what CAD applications rely on.
2) I don't remember seeing what graphics card they used. Tom's is big on benchmarking gaming cards, I have not seen much on workstation level cards on that site. I doubt they used a certified card for their tests.
3) The company I work for won't be moving to Vista anytime soon (unofficially I have heard 'NEVER!').
The important part to come out of this is if you don't have up-to-date drivers and are off of the supported certified hardware your performance may suffer.
I just wanted to follow up on this thread. Is the suggested method of using another server the only solution to this problem? I have seen many other programs having the same problem with Vista; the inability to start a service. It seems like a Vista problem.
