While users of Bentley Structural Analysis software products generally have the option to purchase perpetual licenses of STAAD and RAM software without maintenance, there are specific products and features that require an account to be on either a SELECT or ELS program. These situations are detailed below.
Structural Enterprise
Accounts that own Structural Enterprise perpetual licenses must subscribe to Bentley’s SELECT program and have each license covered by a SELECT subscription. Use of Structural Enterprise as a node-locked license is not permitted. If an account chooses to drop their SELECT subscription for Structural Enterprise, they must relinquish Structural Enterprise and move to perpetual licenses of the standalone products. In doing so, the account may choose any standalone perpetual license portfolio (only products within Structural Enterprise) such that the total license value does not exceed the total license value of their previous Structural Enterprise portfolio. This will generally lead to significantly less product access than Structural Enterprise.
An account that owns Structural Enterprise is not permitted to own perpetual licenses of the standalone products that are included within Structural Enterprise. For example, an account that owns ten Structural Enterprise perpetual licenses is not permitted to also own a perpetual license of STAAD.Pro, since STAAD.Pro is one of the products included in Structural Enterprise. Accounts that own standalone perpetual licenses of STAAD and RAM may upgrade to Structural Enterprise, using the license value of the standalone products as credit towards Structural Enterprise.
STAAD Features Available only to SELECT Subscribers
As of January 2019, STAAD products now contain specific features available only to accounts that have their licenses covered by a SELECT subscription or the ELS program. This started with the STAAD.Pro CONNECT Edition V22 release. This release offers two new features that are available only to SELECT or ELS accounts:
- Steel Autodrafter
- Building Planner (previously known as STAAD PlanWin)
Accounts using STAAD.Pro through a node-locked license will receive an error message when the attempt to access these features. Certain new STAAD and RAM features in future releases may be offered as a SELECT-only entitlement.