Tag: autocad

AutoCAD plugin software licensing

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AutoCAD® is a powerful computer-aided design (CAD) software. It’s also quite extensible since anyone can easily create plug-ins. In this post, we briefly summarise several tips on how to securely license and sell your AutoCAD plug-ins.

Creating the plugin

If you are about to create a new AutoCAD plug-in, we would recommend to review the following tutorial provided by Autodesk.

Adding software licensing

Assuming you have Visual Studio 2017 open, you can add a simple key verification mechanism as described below:

  1. Right click on your project in the Solution Explorer and click on Manage NuGet Packages.
  2. Search for Cryptolens.Licensing and install it.
  3. Add the code-snippet form this page in the code where the plugin loads for the first time.

Selling the plug-in

One way to sell AutoCAD plug-ins is by publishing them in the Autodesk App Store, where a basic licensing mechanism is already provided. The problem with this approach is that the licensing models available are quite limited (eg. you can only charge your customers once for the plug-in and they will be able to use it in perpetuity). For instance, selling your plug-in as a service (subscription model) is not supported.

A better approach is to still publish your plug-in in the Autodesk App Store and set it to be a free app. You can then ask your customers to get a separate license key to be able to unlock all features.

You can read more about various ways of selling your software in our help pages. I would also recommend to check out the available licensing models.

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out!

Usage-based (pay per use) software licensing in .NET

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Many software vendors nowadays move away from one-time payments to other licensing models. One such example is the usage-based model. By doing so helps lowering the barrier of entry for new customers, as they no longer need to commit to the product long term, which is usually the case with one-time payments. If you already have a subscription model, supporting usage-based payments can help you to monetise a group of users who would otherwise not buy the product.

You can read the entire tutorial here.

Getting started

In Cryptolens, usage-based licensing can be implemented using data objects, aka custom variables. We can use these variables to record how often features are used and keep track of any usage credits that a customer has purchased. There are two ways of billing customers:

  • Upfront payment: customers need to purchase usage credits in advance.
  • Based on actual usage: customers pay for the actual usage in the end of the billing period.

Charging based on actual usage

If you choose to charge your customers based on actual usage, we can simply use the code below:

var auth = "Access token with AddDataObject, ListDataObject and IncrementIntValue permission. Please also set KeyLock value to '-1'";
var licenseKey = "LZKZU-MPJEW-TARNP-UHDBQ";

var result = Data.ListDataObjects(auth, new ListDataObjectsToKeyModel 
{
    Contains = "usagecount",
    Key = licenseKey,
    ProductId = 3349 
});

var obj = result.DataObjects.Get("usagecount");

if (obj == null)
{
    // make sure to create it in case it does not exist.
    Data.AddDataObject(auth, new AddDataObjectToKeyModel { Key = licenseKey, ProductId = 3349, Name = "usagecount", IntValue = 1 });

    if(res == null || res.Result == ResultType.Error)
    {
        Console.WriteLine("Could not create new data object. Terminate." + res.Message);
    }
}
else
{
    var res = obj.IncrementIntValue(auth, 1, licenseKey: new LicenseKey { Key = licenseKey, ProductId = 3349 });

    if (res == false) 
    {
        Console.WriteLine("We could not update the data object. Terminate.");
    }
}

Upfront payments

If you instead want to charge your users upfront, we need to create the data objects when creating the license. If you are using payment forms, we can set up two requests, one creating a new license and another creating a new data object (inspired by this tutorial), as the result from key creation will be “piped” into data object creation request. You can then have another payment form that allows users to refill their credits, in which case the custom field can be used.

You can use the code below to verify if the limit was reached inside your application:

var auth = "Access token with AddDataObject, ListDataObject and IncrementIntValue permission. Please also set KeyLock value to '-1'";
var licenseKey = "LZKZU-MPJEW-TARNP-UHDBQ";

var result = Data.ListDataObjects(auth, new ListDataObjectsToKeyModel { Contains = "usagecount", Key = licenseKey, ProductId = 3349 });
var obj = result.DataObjects.Get("usagecount");

var res = obj.DecrementIntValue(auth, decrementValue: 1, enableBound:true, lowerBound: 0, licenseKey: new LicenseKey { Key = licenseKey, ProductId = 3349 });

if (!res)
{
    Console.WriteLine("Could not decrement the data object. The limit was reached.");
}