Using multiple dongles with WAsP/WEng

Context

This document contains advice for end-users of WAsP and WAsP Engineering who have licences for both and want to be able to run them together and separately.

Advice for customers

Many people have bought licences for both WAsP and WAsP Engineering (WEng). While both WAsP and WAsP Engineering can be perfectly well installed at the same computer, even run at the same time, there are some considerations to be made regarding the dongles (= hardware licencing keys). This note explains which dongle configurations are possible.

Both licences on one dongle

If you usually want to run both WAsP and WEng on the same computer, then we recommend that you associate both licences with one dongle: simply inserting that one dongle will allow you to perform calculations with both programs.

Each licence on a different dongle

Some people would like to be able to run WAsP and WEng simultaneously on different machines. To do that, you must have two separate dongles, and associate a licence with each one. They can be inserted together in the same computer, to allow you to perform calculations with both programs.

Why is this important?

Aside from the irritation of fiddling around with dongles, there's a functional consideration too: one of the WAsP Engineering scripts uses WAsP to do some calculations. To run the script, both programs need to be installed and licenced.

How to decide?

It's a trade-off between the convenience of just having one dongle, versus the flexibility of being able to use the programs mix-and-match on different computers.

Parallel port dongles? Not so flexible.

If you want to use a parallel port dongle, then the two-dongle solution won't work. There's a technical constraint which means that you can only have one of our parallel port dongles on one computer at a time. Of course if you never want to run both programs on the same computer, then there's no problem. One parallel port and one USB dongle can be used together.

USB dongles work with hubs

If don't have enough USB ports on your laptop, then you can use a hub. The USB dongles work fine with a hub such as this 4-port Belkin adapter.

How to set up licences for two dongles

If you decide to have two dongles, and want set up one machine with licences for both, then you need to know that the licence manager program only works with one dongle at a time. Insert one dongle, setup the licence code for that, then insert the other dongle and set up the licence code for that. If you insert two dongles simultaneously, then the licence manager will complain, and you won't be able to set up either licence code. When the licence setup is done. Insert both dongles and both programs will be licenced.

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