Using Aimsun Next with a subscription-based license
June 2024 — Technical note #87
Paolo Rinelli
Global Head of Product Management
With the latest version of our transport modelling software, Aimsun Next 24, we launched the myAimsun portal and subscription-based licenses. The portal and subscriptions bring tremendous benefits to our customers in terms of administrative efficiency, remote desktop, cloud computing and improved security. Are you taking full advantage of these benefits? If you’re not sure, read on!
This technical note makes for essential reading for any Aimsun Next user: our Global Head of Product Management, Paolo Rinelli, runs through the process of using the new Aimsun Next subscriptions and explains the great new benefits you’ll see at each step of the way.
How to acquire an Aimsun Next license
When your company purchases a subscription, we ask you to designate a license administrator, and we create an account for this person, known as an Admin.
The Admin will receive an email with instructions for setting a password and activating the account.
Once the account is activated, the Admin can enter the myAimsun Admin portal at https://admin.aimsun.com/ to create User accounts for the colleagues that need access to the subscription.
The Admin goes to Users to create the accounts. There are three different types of account with different types of access:
User: access your license, the User Forum, Aimsun Next manuals and documentation, and download the Aimsun Next installers.
Billing: access the billing information only.
Admin: access everything.
Note that all accounts must have an email domain that corresponds to the organisation.
There are no limits on the number of accounts of each type that the initial Admin can create. This means that your company can have multiple Admin accounts, or even that all modelers can be Admins and self-manage the licenses (though we don’t recommend this in larger organizations).
The Admin can manage who in your company can acquire one of the available “seats” in your subscription. A seat lets you run one instance of Aimsun Next on a computer.
Independence
One of the great advantages of the subscription-based license is that the Admin can freely manage the company’s pool of license seats, distributing them among Users and reassigning them when needed.
For example, your company might have 10 transport modellers who are skilled at using Aimsun Next modelling software, but only 5 of them are working on a modelling project at a time. The subscription-based licenses mean that the company only needs to buy seats for 5 modelers, because they can allocate them to the transport modellers who are using Aimsun Next, and then reassign the seats to other modellers later, when the users release them at the end of the project.
Here is how Admins assign a seat to a User:
Click Manage next to the user’s name.
Go to Subscriptions; select Assign.
Specify how many of the unassigned seats you want to assign to the user.
Note that the Admin cannot take back the seats assigned to the User when they are acquired in a computer; to take back the seats, the User must first release those seats themselves..
Users can access the myAimsun portal by clicking on the login icon that appears in the upper-right-hand corner of the Aimsun website, or by typing the address https://my.aimsun.com in a browser.
After you log in, go to Subscriptions -> My subscriptions you will find the seats assigned to you by the Admin. If you don’t see any items there, contact your Admin.
Under Subscriptions -> Downloads you will find links to download the installers of the latest versions of Aimsun Next. The versions that support subscription-based licenses are 22.0.3, 23.0.1 and 24.0.0 and later updates.
To acquire a license for your computer, you’ll also need to install Aimsun Licenser [1]. If you already installed it in the past, ensure it is version 2.0.5 or later.
[1] From version Aimsun Next 24.0.1 onwards, the Licenser will be fully integrated. In the current version of Aimsun Next 24.0.0, you still need to use the standalone Licenser in addition to Aimsun Next 24.
Launch Aimsun Licenser and login with the same credentials you used to enter myAimsun. Note that you need to be connected to the internet to use the Licenser.
In the My Subscriptions tab you can see the seats assigned to you, as in myAimsun.
Select Acquire to activate the assigned seat(s) in the current computer.
Note that if you have assigned multiple seats, you activate all your assigned seats in the computer running the Licenser, and this allows you to run multiple instances of Aimsun Next in that computer.
You cannot activate a seat on one computer and another seat on another computer. If you want to activate two different computers, for example a laptop to edit models and a workstation to run simulations, you have two choices:
- Activate each with a different User e.g, creating additional Users with alias emails.
- Ask your Admin to contact us at info@aimsun.com to request the reconfiguration of your subscription seats. We’ll assign you two sets of seats so that you can activate one on each computer.
Remote desktop
Another major benefit of using a subscription-based licensing system is that you can use Aimsun Next on a computer that you have accessed via a remote desktop connection.
When you decide to use a remote desktop, remember that your license seats are for the computer, not the user of the computer. This means that those seats will be shared with other users of that computer, so if two users want to use Aimsun Next at the same time on that computer, you must acquire two seats with your account.
To take an example, let’s imagine that a server has two users, Person A and Person B. If Person A runs the Licenser in the server and acquires his seats, then Person B won’t be able to run the licenser and acquire his seats, because the seats of Person A are for the computer, not for the user, so Person B will launch Aimsun Next using Person A’s seats. For Person A and Person B to use Aimsun Next at the same time, their Admin needs to assign multiple seats before acquiring the license for the server.
Security – automatic license recovery
Subscriptions bring you greater security because each activation will automatically expire after one month (or when your subscription expires, if earlier).
This is a safety mechanism so that if your laptop is lost, damaged or stolen, the license will be recovered automatically at the end of the activation period.
Note that neither the Admin nor Aimsun can remotely deactivate a license.
You can check when your activation expires by selecting Activations in the Licenser.
If you expect to be without an internet connection when your license is going to expire, you can Release it at any time and Acquire it again to get 30 days of validity from the new acquisition.
If you no longer need to use Aimsun Next, you can release the seats acquired in your computer at any time by clicking on the Release button in Aimsun Licenser. Once this is done, the Admin can take back your seats and reassign them to another colleague.
Cloud computing
The new subscription-based license for Aimsun Next facilitates cloud computing; it does not rely on a hardware key and allows you to programmatically acquire and release a license for a (virtual) computer that you can create and destroy on demand.
For this use case, when you open the Licenser, instead of acquiring your assigned seats, you generate a token by clicking the corresponding button. If you cannot see the button, ask your Admin to drop us an email at info@aimsun.com and ask us to add token support to your company’s subscription.
Copy the token that is generated, as it is not saved anywhere.
Before starting Aimsun Next in the cloud computer, execute the command:
licenser-console activate USERNAME TOKEN –duration HHh
where:
- USERNAME is the same as the one that you use to enter myAimsun
- TOKEN is the string you copied
- HHh is the number of hours you want the activation to be valid for, or you can use DDd to specify a validity in days. We recommend that you set a period that is not too long, because if you are unable to deactivate the license as described below, you won’t be able to recover the license until this period has elapsed from the moment you run the activation command.
Before shutting down or destroying the virtual computer, execute the command:
licenser-console deactivate USERNAME TOKEN
This makes the seats available to you again, to be acquired with the Licenser or to be used again with Licenser Console via the same token.
If you forget or lose the token, you can generate another at any time; note that the token consumes your assigned seats only while it is activated following the procedure described above.
Licenser Console is not included in the Aimsun Licenser installer. You will receive it from our Commercial Operations team via info@aimsun.com when you request the activation of tokens for your subscriptions.
Notes
[1] From version Aimsun Next 24.0.1 onwards, the Licenser will be fully integrated. In the current version of Aimsun Next 24.0.0, you still need to use the standalone Licenser in addition to Aimsun Next 24.
