Signing applications

An executable for an application created with NX Open must be signed before it can be executed by anybody who does not have an NX Open Author license. This typically includes primary users of the executable (e.g. mechanical designers at your site). Signing is done with the NX Open signing utility before distributing the application to the user base.

Digital signature

Starting in NX 1872 (C++ executables) and NX 1899 (.NET executables), you can both sign the executable with the NX Open signing utility AND digitally sign it — previously these were incompatible. Digital signing adds an extra layer of security/protection, especially useful when distributing to other sites. It can be done via a Microsoft-approved third-party certificate authority (CA) or your own signing process.

Order matters: when applying both signatures, the NX Open signature must be added first. If a digital signature is already present, adding the NX Open signature afterward produces an error.

Starting in NX 1899 (C++ and .NET Open applications), the NX version used to sign the application is injected into the signature — visible via the -validate option on the appropriate signing tool.

Related Topics

• Signing Process
• Signing Process - Language specific details
• Feature based license checking
• License Management
• User-defined license contexts
• Named user NX licensing