Dropping maintenance on SW2024

We are considering dropping the maintenance on SW 2024. Very small company, I have been the engineering department.

I am retiring, and only occasionally doing very small designs for 3D printed parts, nothing fancy. As far as that goes, SW2008 would do more than I ever need. Big projects will be done by outside contractors.

I just want to double check, if we drop the yearly maintenance, the version we have will still run?

Don’t need updates. Don’t need cloud anything.

Yes, but you may have reactivate it every year I think. Make sure to download the latest service pack (I mean complete installation files) you are entitled to. Keep your serial number(s) handy as well. And finally I would suggest to download older versions as well in case you want to use them.

The software will keep running unless the system crashes/breakdown. And in this scenario, only your VAR will be able to help you to get it back.

No, you don’t need to do that. We are off subscription since 2022 SP5 and have never been asked to re-activate.

The only time we had to activate one of our licenses was when we added a new PC and moved one of our licenses.
We have downloaded all versions (from 2011 to 2022) and were able to install it without any problem. Off course after installing on the new PC, at the first run, we were asked for activation, which was very smooth and without any problem.

I can confirm everything Tera says.

We have several licenses that have been off maintenance for quite a while, one from 2010. All still work fine and can be transferred between machines. There is no requirement to reactivate every year.

This has been added starting from 2024, and you will have to reactivate it every year (even if you are not on maintaince).

This only applies for Solidworks 2022 onwards ?

God, thanks to anyone who decided to end our subscription. Those who are running SW are out of their mind.

2024 and onwards as far as I know due to changes in the FlexLM technology.

https://www.javelin-tech.com/blog/2023/11/important-transfer-activation-prior-to-upgrading-to-solidworks-2024/
https://www.goengineer.com/blog/solidworks-yearly-reactivation-date

https://www.javelin-tech.com/blog/2023/06/why-are-my-solidworks-licenses-expiring-a-guide-to-license-reactivation/

Most of our files are now 2024… I won’t be able to do anything with them on an older version…
I have 2018 on this computer as well as 2024. I downloaded a bunch of files so I think I have the stuff to do an install of 2024 on our server. I’m not sure if it’s worth downloading all the files for 2018?

You can convert 2024 files to 2023 or 22 (in case you want to). So having installation files for these versions might be helpful.

We had to reactivate sw2023 has it started a lousy popup that made our users panic. thank you dassault.

Isn’t that special