Can I specify whether FME Desktop uses my ArcGIS Desktop or ArcGIS Engine license?

When it comes time for FME Desktop to grab an Esri ArcGIS license, we follow a general principle of checking out the "highest license available" for any particular situation. As a result, this logic generally searches for products in the following order:

1. ArcGIS Server
2. ArcGIS Engine (higher license)
3. ArcGIS Desktop
4. ArcGIS Engine (lower license)
5. ArcGIS Pro

Please note that if an FME Desktop application is running, FME will favour checking out a license from an ArcGIS Desktop product (i.e. ArcGIS Desktop over ArcGIS Engine).

@RylanAtSafe

 

Thanks for this explanation! However in reality this does not seem to work that way. I have both ArcGIS Desktop and ArcGIS Pro installed. I noticed that FME 64bit automatically connects to the ArcGIS Pro license (both are 64bit), whilst FME 32bit automatically connects to the ArcGIS Desktop license (both are 32bit).

 

 

It would be nice if you could choose an available license. Perhaps as an option within the ArcGIS readers/writers it concerns, otherwise as an option in the Tools > FME Options.

 

Hi @lars_de_vries, thank you for adding this comment! Do you have 64-bit ArcGIS Background Geoprocessing installed? If not, I think what you have observed makes sense with respect to the matching "bitness" of applications – otherwise looks like we will need to re-investigate current behaviour!

 

Hi @rylanatsafe

 

I came to the conclusion after I posted my response that I forgot to do that. But still it would be nice if you could influence the license picked up by FME.

Hi @lars_de_vries, thank you for adding this comment! Do you have 64-bit ArcGIS Background Geoprocessing installed? If not, I think what you have observed makes sense with respect to the matching "bitness" of applications – otherwise looks like we will need to re-investigate current behaviour!

 

FME used to grab a ArcGIS Desktop license, untill we've updated our ESRI license manager to the latest version to support ArcGIS 10.6 and Pro 2.1 (was 10.5 and 2) and also installed ArcGIS 10.6, As of then it grabs the Pro licenses instead. This is on every device we've running ArcGIS 10.6, ArcGIS Pro 2.0 and FME 2017.1 (32-bit). We don't have the 64-bit ArcGIS backupgrond geoprocessing installed.

 

 

FME used to grab a ArcGIS Desktop license, untill we've updated our ESRI license manager to the latest version to support ArcGIS 10.6 and Pro 2.1 (was 10.5 and 2) and also installed ArcGIS 10.6, As of then it grabs the Pro licenses instead. This is on every device we've running ArcGIS 10.6, ArcGIS Pro 2.0 and FME 2017.1 (32-bit). We don't have the 64-bit ArcGIS backupgrond geoprocessing installed.

 

 

@bartfranken - I am unable to reproduce this issue. The 64-bit Libraries of ArcGIS Pro should not be available to FME 32-bit (without 64-bit Background Geoprocessing). I encourage you to open a Support Ticket referencing this Q&A; Thread for further investigation.

 

 

Helpful information will include..

 

- Log Files identifying that the ArcGIS Pro license is consumed instead of ArcGIS Desktop when running a translation that uses an Esri format accessing ArcObjects (for example, GEODATABASE_FILE).

 

- The HTML output of the report attached to this Knowledge Center article.

 

 

I'm sorry for the inconvenience you are experiencing.