Borrowing a License

This document guides users on how to borrow a Creo (Parametric and/or Schematics) license from a license server for use when not connected to the license server.

Creo Parametric

Luckily, PTC has in-place an infrastructure that's fairly straightforward for borrowing a license of Creo Parametric. To do this, on the computer on which you're borrowing the license for, open the parametric_borrow.bat file located in %(CREO_INSTALL_PATH)/Parametric/bin (see picture below).

The default maximum number of days you can borrow a license for is 5 days, if you need a longer time than that please check out the section below. Once you run this file, select how many days you'd like to borrow the license for. When you open Creo for the first time, you'll need to set the start directory (generally MyDocuments or something similar should work fine).

Borrowing Creo for longer than 5 days

PTC lets you borrow Creo for up to 179 days, but you need to configure a Windows environment variable. To do this, navigate the Start Menu and type "environment variable" - select the Edit the system environment variables option.

In the System Properties window that pops up, select "Environment Variables" at the bottom. Hit the "New" button under User Variables. Type in the name LM_BORROW_DURATION and assign a value of 179 (shown below) and select OK.

Now when you run parametric_borrow.bat, you will be able to borrow a license for up to 179 days.

Creo Schematics

Creo Schematics can be borrowed similar to Creo Parametric but there is no existing "borrow" file like Creo Parametric. To get around this, copy the parametric_borrow.bat from the Creo Parametric bin folder and paste it into the %(CREO_INSTALL_PATH)/Schematics/bin folder (shown below).

To avoid confusion, rename it to schematics_borrow.bat and edit it with a Notepad application (shown below).

At the bottom of the schematics_borrow.bat file, change the -borrow line (usually line 50) from parametric.exe to schematics.exe, matching the name of the Application file in the Creo Schematics bin directory (shown below).

From there, run the schematics_borrow.bat and select the number of days you'd like to borrow this license.