OpenLM for HELiOS: Eliminate usage blind spots and optimize ISD PDM license costs

Get workstation-level visibility into how your engineering teams use ISD Group’s HELiOS PDM system alongside HiCAD. Track feature-level activity, attribute every session to a real user, and manage HELiOS alongside 100+ other engineering license managers — all from one dashboard.

HELiOS License Manager

Understanding the solution: What is HELiOS license manager?

HELiOS is the product data management (PDM) system developed by Germany’s ISD Group. It’s most commonly deployed alongside ISD’s own HiCAD CAD software, and it also integrates with Autodesk Inventor, AutoCAD, and EPLAN P8 — giving mechanical and plant engineering teams a single system for managing CAD drawings, articles, and documents across the entire product lifecycle.

From a licensing standpoint, HELiOS behaves like the other floating and network-based engineering license managers OpenLM monitors. Rather than licensing named users individually, ISD issues HELiOS as part of a shared license pool: administrators activate a set number of module entitlements on a central server, and any workstation on the network can draw from that pool through the ISD License Manager. Teams that need to keep working while disconnected from the server can check out a commuter license for a defined period.

Quick facts:

Vendor: ISD Group (Germany)
Paired CAD software: HiCAD — also integrates with Autodesk Inventor, AutoCAD, and EPLAN P8
Primary use case: Product data management (PDM) and product lifecycle management (PLM) for mechanical engineering and manufacturing teams
Licensing model: Local (workstation-bound) or network (server-bound) licenses managed via the ISD License Manager, with commuter licenses for offline use
How OpenLM connects: Log-file based, through the OpenLM Broker — no API or license file involved (see “How OpenLM monitors HELiOS” below)

The HELiOS licensing landscape: The "state of the union"

ISD Group’s HELiOS is the product data management (PDM) backbone for engineering teams running HiCAD, and it also integrates with Autodesk Inventor, AutoCAD, and EPLAN P8 — centralizing CAD drawings, articles, and documents across the entire product lifecycle. Like HiCAD, HELiOS is typically deployed under a network (server-bound) license: a shared pool of module entitlements that any connected workstation can draw from, with commuter licenses available for teams that need to keep working while disconnected from the license server.

The visibility gap

ISD’s own License Manager shows administrators which modules are currently activated and how many licenses remain in the pool at a given moment. What it doesn’t provide is a historical, cross-workstation view: which designer used which module, on which machine, and since when. For a PDM system that sits at the center of a company’s entire engineering workflow, that gap makes it hard to answer basic questions — is the EPLAN P8 interface actually being used by the people it’s assigned to? Which teams are really driving demand for extension modules like the Vault Server or Replication Management?

The “hidden cost” narrative

As HELiOS network licenses are shared across a pool rather than tied to named users, seat sprawl is easy to miss. A module gets activated for a project, the project wraps, and nobody deactivates it—leading to a major leak in HELiOS license management. Multiply that across design offices, workstations, and PDM extension modules, and the next license renewal ends up sized on outdated assumptions rather than what teams are actually touching.

Quick summary: OpenLM for HELiOS

OpenLM empowers you to turn HELiOS’s vendor usage log into an actionable, organization-wide view of PDM and CAD activity.

Track feature-level usage: See exactly which HELiOS and HiCAD modules are in active use, counted per feature.
Attribute usage to real people: Resolve activity to a full username where available, with an automatic fallback to User ID so no session goes unattributed.
Pinpoint the workstation: Know exactly which machine every HELiOS session originated from.
Timestamp every session: Capture the start time of each feature-usage event for accurate historical and audit-ready reporting.
Centralize alongside your CAD estate: View HELiOS usage in the same dashboard as your other 100+ supported license managers — from Autodesk to Bentley to Sentinel.

Comprehensive solution framework

The visibility layer

Gain a feature-level view of HELiOS activity: who is using which module, from which workstation, and when each session began. This replaces the point-in-time snapshot from ISD’s own License Manager with a continuous, historical record.

The intelligence layer

Turn individual sessions into adoption patterns. See which departments, projects, or workstations are the heaviest users of specific HELiOS and HiCAD modules, so procurement conversations are grounded in real activity instead of guesswork.

The unified estate layer

HELiOS rarely runs alone — most engineering organizations pair it with CAD tools, simulation software, and other license managers. OpenLM brings HELiOS usage into the same dashboard as the rest of your 100+ supported engineering license managers, so your PDM system is no longer a blind spot managed in isolation.

How OpenLM monitors HELiOS

OpenLM connects to HELiOS the same way it connects to other log-file based license managers in its engineering portfolio: through the OpenLM Broker.

No API, no CLI — log file only

HELiOS doesn’t expose an HTTP/REST API, a web dashboard, or a command-line option for querying usage at runtime.
Instead, the OpenLM Broker reads the vendor-generated HELiOS usage log, configured through the Broker Config Tool or Broker Web UI.
No license file is used for this integration — all reporting comes from the log itself.

Reported metrics

Metric	Support
Quantity (in use)	Supported — counted per feature from active sessions
Username	Supported — full name, with a fallback to User ID when the full name isn’t available
Workstation	Supported — machine name
Start time (usage)	Supported — timestamp of the feature-usage event
Total, Expiration date, Denied, Borrowed	Not currently present in the vendor-generated HELiOS log