KEVOS® Knowledge Library · SolidWorks API Add-in Development

Licensing, Distribution and Commercialisation

Per-seat licensing mechanics, the choice between building protection and buying it, and the distribution channels and commercial terms that turn a working add-in into a product.

Doc № KL-ENG-COMP-010
Engineering › Computers
Part 10 of 10
8 min read
Updated 2026-08-04

01Executive summary

An add-in that works is not yet a product. Between working software and revenue sit three questions: how a licence is enforced, how the product is presented, and through which channel it reaches a buyer. Each has established answers, and each has a version that is cheap now and expensive later.

The engineering content here is narrow but decisive. A per-seat licence requires the software to distinguish one machine from another, and to bind an entitlement to that identity. Everything after that is packaging and commercial terms.

2licensing routes

4activation stages

3online channels

15–40%typical reseller margin

02The per-seat problem

Selling an installer and taking payment does nothing to stop that installer being run on any number of machines, or passed on. If the commercial model is a site licence, that may be acceptable. If it is per-seat — the normal model for this kind of tool — the software has to enforce it.

Enforcement rests on machine identity. A machine is generally distinguished by its hardware, with the mainboard and the primary storage device serving as the usual identifiers. The software derives a fingerprint from those, and an entitlement is issued against that fingerprint rather than against the customer.

Fingerprint
The installed product derives a stable identifier from the hardware it is running on.
Request
That identifier is presented to the user as a request code and sent to the vendor.
Unlock
The vendor generates an unlock code that is valid only against that identifier, and returns it.
Persist
The product stores the unlock so the user is not asked again on the next launch.

Fingerprint stability

The identifier must be stable enough that ordinary maintenance does not invalidate a licence, and specific enough that copying the installation does. Those two requirements pull against each other, and getting the balance wrong produces either trivially bypassed protection or a support queue of customers locked out by a disk replacement.

03Build it or buy it

Self-implementedFree, quick, and only as strong as you make it. Reasonable where the deployment environment is trusted and casual copying is the realistic threat. You forgo protected storage, online activation and the tamper resistance a dedicated product provides — and doing it properly demands more systems and hardware knowledge than the application itself.

Commercial licence managementWhat the large majority of licensed software uses. A dedicated vendor supplies obfuscation, protected algorithms, one-way hashing and rolling key schemes. You do not need to understand the internals; you need to understand the protection level offered, the licensing models supported, and how it integrates with your build.

Managed code needs managed protection

An add-in built on a managed runtime compiles to intermediate code, which is far more readable after the fact than native binaries. Protection designed for native Windows executables does not address that. Choose a product that explicitly targets your runtime.

Evaluating a licence-management product
Question	Why it matters
Does it target managed assemblies?	Native-only protection leaves intermediate code readable
Which licensing models are supported?	Per-seat, floating, subscription and trial each need different machinery
How is activation delivered?	Offline exchange, online activation, or both — offline matters in controlled engineering networks
What happens when the vendor's service is unavailable?	A licensing system that fails closed will stop your customers working
How is it integrated into the build?	Post-build processing changes your release procedure
What does re-hosting a licence cost the customer?	Hardware refresh cycles make this a recurring support question

04Preparing the product for market

Presentation work is inexpensive and disproportionately effective. It is also the part engineers most reliably skip.

Asset 01

Logo

Keep it simple. A simple mark reads at small sizes, survives single-colour reproduction, and can be etched, cut or printed onto anything. Producing a text form and a separate symbol lets each be used independently.

Asset 02

Slogan

One line that states what the product does for the buyer. It has to work in a search result, on a banner and in a sentence of speech.

Asset 03

Banner and splash

The images that carry the product into other people's pages and into its own first run.

Asset 04

A simple website

What the product does, who it is for, what it costs, and how to buy it. Four questions, answered without scrolling.

Asset 05

Packaging

Required for retail, and useful even for digital sale as the visual anchor of the product.

Asset 06

Demonstration material

A short recording of the product doing the thing it is bought for outperforms any amount of description.

Vector before raster

Produce the mark as vector artwork — mathematically defined lines and curves rather than a grid of coloured dots. Vector artwork scales without loss and can be driven directly by cutting, etching and signage equipment. Rebranding later because the original logo cannot be reproduced at the size or in the medium you now need is an avoidable cost.

05Distribution channels

Three online routes, plus retail. They differ mainly in who carries the sales effort and when money changes hands.

Channel comparison
Channel	Who sells	Payment timing	Margin position
Self-sale through your own site	You	At the point of sale	You keep the full price and carry all the effort
Reseller	The reseller	After the reseller sells to the end customer	Reseller takes a cut, typically in the range 15 to 40 per cent
Franchise	The franchisee	In advance, when the franchisee buys stock	You set the terms; the franchisee's margin is whatever they achieve above your price
Retail	The store	On the store's terms	Widest audience reach, strictest packaging and reference requirements

Self-sale mechanics

Selling from your own site needs a way to take payment and a way to collect customer details. A payment-provider button and a simple form will carry a single-product catalogue perfectly well; a full commerce platform with a merchant account is worth the setup only once there is a range to sell.

Approaching a reseller

Open with a short message — a few sentences, not a specification. If there is interest, expect a request for evaluation copies, followed by a standard agreement. The structure is usually consistent: you supply on request, you are paid on their accounting cycle rather than yours, you are paid for units sold through to customers rather than units shipped to the reseller, they take an agreed percentage, and you provide a recommended retail price.

Retail requirements

Physical retail adds obligations that digital channels do not: the product must be packaged, it must carry a traceable reference, printed works need the appropriate publishing identifier, and licensed software must ship with keys already allocated. Individual retailers add their own conditions on top.

Why retail still matters for technical products

Retail reaches age groups and buying habits that online channels reach less reliably. For a product sold into engineering offices the online channels will usually dominate, but the reach argument is real and worth weighing rather than dismissing.

06Marketing without mystique

Marketing an engineering tool is not complicated. Produce the material, then put it where the buyers already are.

Paid placement on sites your buyers already read. A fixed fee for a banner and a link on a well-trafficked industry site is the most direct route to a qualified audience.
Search advertising. Paid placement against the terms people use when they are looking for what you sell.
Demonstration video, prominently placed. On the front page, not buried in a support section.
Customer testimonials. Prospective buyers weight what existing users say far above what the vendor says. Ask for them explicitly.
Cards and direct contact with known customers and target accounts. Unfashionable and still effective in a specialist market.
Direct approaches to retailers and distributors. Ask for five minutes in person, and use those five minutes to arrange a proper meeting rather than to pitch.

Match the channel to the market

Every product has a market, and advertising outside it is money spent to be ignored. A SolidWorks add-in belongs in front of design offices, engineering managers and reseller networks — not in front of a general software audience.

07Quick reference

Per-seat enforcement: Fingerprint the machine, issue an entitlement against the fingerprint, persist the unlock.
Fingerprint sources: Hardware identifiers, conventionally the mainboard and primary storage device.
Build versus buy: Self-implementation is free and weak; commercial licence management is what most licensed software uses.
Runtime match: Managed assemblies need protection designed for managed code.
Presentation set: Logo, slogan, banner, website, packaging, demonstration material.
Channels: Self-sale, reseller (post-payment, 15–40 per cent), franchise (pre-payment), retail (packaging and reference requirements).

08Pathway close-out

Key takeaways

Per-seat licensing reduces to one engineering problem: distinguishing this machine from every other machine, stably.
Self-implemented protection is reasonable only where casual copying is the realistic threat; anything more demands a dedicated product built for your runtime.
Presentation assets are cheap, quick and repay themselves — and are the step engineers skip most reliably.
Channel choice is a trade between margin, effort and payment timing; resellers pay after the sale, franchisees pay before it.
Advertise where your buyers already are. Reach outside the market is not reach.
Across all ten parts the pattern holds: decide the architecture deliberately, build the teardown alongside the setup, verify on machines that are not yours, and treat deployment and licensing as engineering work rather than afterthoughts.