AB Toolkit Program

I doubt it is available to end user companies.
The software sales are what make Rockwell the money so I can't see them selling the toolkit.(they don't actually sell it, they rent the use of the software to you for a year)
Regards Alan Case

In 2009, 'almost all' of the toolkit offerings will be authorized via FactoryTalk. The key disk is history.

There are three Toolkit programs I'm familiar with; OEM, Integrator, and Corporate Engineering. The companies I've seen who are eligible for the Corporate Engineering toolkit are fairly large national companies with centralized engineering resources.

Give your local RA office a call to figure out if your company could benefit from and is elegible for the Toolkit program.

The way FactoryTalk licensing for the Toolkit works is generally that you get 5, 10, or 20 licenses and each license gets used by 1 engineer. That Toolkit license is powerful; it will activate any software in the Toolkit program, and as many simultaneously on your PC as you can run. I use a similar activation and can run FTView, RSLogix, RSLinx Classic, and SoftLogix all off the same single activation key.

Some choose to use the "Node-Locked" activations that require that you move around a hardware dongle between users, but most corporate engineering departments use the "Concurrent Licenses" that use a license server to provide the most flexibility for software use by a wide variety and large number of users.

Ken

I am trying to get this info for 2 reasons. First I am serving as a plant engineer on a new job that has various pieces of Rockwell software but not everything that we need. we have mostly contrologix but some slc, micrologix, plc-2 and plc-5, all models of panel views including 1200 and 1400 for which we have no software several different networks, etc this is going be a lot of software if purchased separately we have 3 manufacturing locations in the u.s. we are a very large name brand food product so I hope we will qualify. I also do some systems integrator work on the side for a few customers I have about 12 good customers and wanted to know if I may be able to get the toolkit also given this info what would be your opinion. also are there any documents that I can find that has some of the info you have given on the program maybe some catalog numbers so I can get prices ?



Thank you for all the great info ken

I recommend buying your own software! Yes I know software is costly. It is a tax deduction and it is yours forever. My few question are what is your plan after you no longer work for that shop? Are you going to stop supporting your customer that you have worked so hard to get and keep? If so what is your integrity worth? I am not trying to start a fight or argue just asking a few questions that some old wise man asked me.

I've been in the program as an integrator for several years. I can only echo what Ken said: Call your local RA office or distributor and see if you qualify. If you do they will be happy to help you get set up (at least mine certainly is). The biggest hurdle for a small integrator in the past has been meeting the sales target.