How to Activate a BricsCAD Trial Online

Quick answer: When you open a new major version of BricsCAD with no licence found, a dialog box appears. Click Activate trial and, with an internet connection, the trial activates automatically. It runs fully functional for 30 days at BricsCAD Ultimate level.

What You Get With a BricsCAD Trial

The trial isn’t a limited demo: it runs as a full BricsCAD Ultimate licence for 30 days, giving you every toolset (2D, 3D, Mechanical, BIM) to test. If you specifically want to see how a lower licence level behaves rather than the full Ultimate feature set, run the SETLICENSELEVEL command inside BricsCAD to simulate one. Once the 30 days are up, you’ll need to activate a valid commercial licence to keep using the software.

How to Activate Your Trial Online

1. Open BricsCAD. If no licence is found, the BricsCAD dialog box opens automatically.
2. Click Activate trial.

That’s it, activation completes over the internet with no further steps. This method requires an active internet connection on the computer running BricsCAD.

No Internet Connection?

If the machine running BricsCAD isn’t online, you can still activate a trial using a second, internet-connected device. In BricsCAD, choose to activate manually to get that computer’s Host ID, then on the connected device, log in to your Octave account, choose to activate a trial manually, and enter that Host ID to generate a licence file. Downloading that file and pointing BricsCAD to it on the offline machine completes activation. It’s a longer process than online activation, so if you regularly install on offline machines, it’s worth planning for in advance rather than discovering it mid-install.

Frequently Asked Questions

What happens after my 30-day trial ends? You’ll need to activate a valid commercial licence to continue using BricsCAD. The trial itself doesn’t extend or renew automatically.

Can I try a specific licence level instead of the full Ultimate trial? Yes. The trial runs at Ultimate level by default, but the SETLICENSELEVEL command lets you simulate a lower level if you want to see how it behaves before buying.

What if my computer doesn’t have an internet connection? You can still activate a trial manually using a second, internet-connected device to generate a licence file, though it takes several more steps than online activation.