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ANSYS BLOG

October 3, 2019

What Is Elastic Licensing and Why It’s a Hot Topic for Engineers

Elastic licensing is a form of pay-per-use licensing that gives customers access to tools and resources they need when they need them.

You’ve probably used something similar before — like a gift card. You prepay and load the card with money to purchase items. When the card’s balance is empty, you can reload it to make more purchases.


Elastic Licensing works like a prepaid gift card. Users buy Ansys Elastic
Units (AEUs) to gain access to the products they need.

Elastic licensing works similarly, making it a hot topic in the engineering world. For instance, engineers might need temporary access to simulation software to increase throughput at critical points in their project. Or they might need a specific tool that they would use once or twice a year.

To address this need, engineers can use Ansys Elastic Licensing. With this licensing model, they can purchase Ansys Elastic Units (AEUs) to gain access across the portfolio, expand existing licenses or utilize high-performance computing (HPC) resources.


How Ansys Elastic Licensing Helps Product Design

Engineers can use AEUs to access various tools to:

  • Manipulate geometry
  • Optimize designs
  • Pre-process models
  • Run simulation solvers
  • Post-process simulations

AEUs can be used to access simulation and HPC technology on-premise or on the cloud.


Ansys Elastic Units offer additional software and high-performance computing capacity that can be accessed after existing licenses (leased and owned) are already in use during peak times.

Each tool has its own associated AEU price. Engineers can use the internet portal to monitor the usage of their AEUs.

AEUs augment the value of leased and owned licenses by allowing engineers to:

  • Access more of the Ansys portfolio
  • Run simulations when all seats are in use
  • Utilize additional HPC resources

These capabilities can help engineers work through a product development crunch and expand productivity.