Licenses based on hours vs seats

[digitalcarbon]

Ok...so I got a 2nd seat of VW & have some part-time help that work from home,

 

Both people are using my 2nd seat...one is using it Monday, the other Friday...

 

I understand that they cannot use it on the same day...

 

However...it would seem like Licensing should be based on how many hours per week vs seat...

 

This would mean that I could have 10 people (I'm exaggerating) using the 2nd seat at the same time as long as they did not go over 40hrs/week...

 

This would allow for me to get the most work out of a 2nd seat...i.e. pay for itself...

 

 

[digitalcarbon]

I understand that in the old days if you bought a 2nd drafting machine (lets say $5000) you could only have one person working on it at a time...

 

you could not have 10 people working on it at once for 4hrs each for a 40hr work week.

 

so it was your job to make sure that you had work to pay for it...

 

 

[digitalcarbon]

ok so what is the point? why not have one person for 40hrs vs a bunch of part time help?

 

my part time help is at different levels of skill...and I assign them tasks based on there expertise...where as the one person is at lets say expert but I have them doing new newbie stuff.

 

I can have a newbie doing title block stuff,  spell checking & keeping the resource browser clean, etc

I can have a IFC person that does IFC house keeping.

 

also with a few people as part-time help i can ramp up quicker than expect my one person to work over 40hrs...

 

just thinking out loud

 

THEN, if this was all browser based these "cleaners" could hire themselves out to others who need behind the scenes house keeping but would not mess with any design stuff.

Edited October 10, 2018 by digitalcarbon

[Matt Overton]

I know of offices that would need more licenses than staff with this restriction.

[rgcn]

What happens if one of the folks you hired temporarily leaves their Vectorworks App running while they are on the phone, or step away from the computer for quite some time not closing the window.  This would eat into your "hours"

 

This idea would require a lot of management to make sure the application is only open when drawing.  This would also require lots of quitting and restarting Vectorworks throughout the day, which also could eat up productivity time in the office. 

 

Just my 2 cents.

 

Rob

[PVA - Admin]

I think an hourly license may not be the way to go, but a more user-controllable way of passing off an active seat from one user to another would likely solve this scenario much more cleanly. 

I absolutely agree that we need more licensing options than we currently have, and more are indeed planned but no details yet.

[digitalcarbon]

you all make good points...i repent...it now seems like a dumb idea