ZEISS arivis products, including ZEISS arivis Pro (formerly arivis Vision4D) and ZEISS arivis Pro VR (formerly arivis VisionVR) are protected from unauthorised usage using a licensing system. This licensing system limits the features available to the user, the number of users who can use a license simultaneously, what updates can be applied, and how the license can be accessed.

The licenses can come as either "Soft" licenses based on physical characteristics of a computer, or "Hard" license tied to a USB "dongle".  The licenses can also be fixed, where only the machine where the license resides can use it, or floating, where the license resides on a license server and is then distributed out to clients on the network.

Hard licenses do not normally require activation, but soft licenses do. 

 This article describes how to: