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Reading DSP_SELFCHECK: what each line tells you

One command, typed inside Plant 3D, that lists what DSP knows about itself: which copy loaded and from where, whether Plant 3D trusts its folder, what Plant 3D is running underneath, and what the license says. This page explains every line it prints.

What the command is, and what it never does

DSP_SELFCHECK is the command to type when DSP is not behaving the way you expect. It reads facts from your own computer and prints them, one per line, on the command line of the drawing you have open. It writes no file, it makes no network connection, and it sends nothing anywhere — the last line it prints says so. The report reaches us only if you copy the lines and send them to support@nutechna.com.

It is deliberately available even when your seat is not checked out. A diagnostic that refused to run whenever the license was the problem would be missing in exactly the case it exists for, so it never asks the license for permission. It also leaves things out on purpose: it never prints the license file itself or its signature, and it prints only a shortened form of your computer's fingerprint — enough for us to tell two computers apart, never enough to rebuild one's identity.

If the command is not there

If you type DSP_SELFCHECK and Plant 3D answers "Unknown command," DSP did not load. That single fact is useful, because it separates two different families of problem: a plugin that Plant 3D never loaded, and a plugin that loaded and then declined to work. The second family is what the report below helps with; for the first, look at the UPDATE PLUGIN page in the Companion, whose status line reports these conditions:

You installed DSP and have not started Plant 3D since. Plant 3D loads the plugin when it starts, so it is not there until the next start (the page reads LOADS ON NEXT PLANT 3D START).
Your Plant 3D is older than 2026.2. DSP is built for the .NET that Plant 3D 2026.2 and newer host. On an older release the plugin would load nothing and say nothing, so the Companion tells you on the UPDATE PLUGIN page before it fetches anything.
Plant 3D would skip the plugin's folder or stop to ask about its publisher. The page then reads INSTALLED BUT PLANT 3D WILL NOT LOAD IT — CHOOSE INSTALL AGAIN (or PLANT 3D WILL ASK BEFORE LOADING IT), with a sentence saying which condition failed.
Plant 3D has never been started on this Windows account. There is nowhere yet to record the plugin, and the page says to start Plant 3D once, close it, and choose Install again.
Another copy of DSP is the one Plant 3D runs. See "Two copies" below.

Run the command in a drawing window; the report is written to that drawing's command line.

What a report looks like

Each line is a label, a colon and a value. The angle-bracket parts here stand for values that are specific to your computer, and the rules above and below the report are shortened:

===== DSP SELF-CHECK =====
  plugin      : DSP <release>  [customer]  (assembly 1.0.0.0)
  loaded from : <folder>
  bundle      : <folder>
  install     : per-user (%APPDATA%)
  trusted     : <verdict>
  trustedpaths: <folder list>
  runtime     : <.NET version>
  product     : <product>  release <number>
  license     : Licensed  (DSP-<code>)
  token file  : present
  org         : <your firm>
  expires     : <date> UTC
  seats       : <number>
  features    : <names, or (none)>
  machine     : <8 characters>… (truncated)
  local time  : <date, time, offset>
  Read these lines to support@nutechna.com. Nothing was sent.
=========================

The org, expires, seats and features lines appear only when the license line reads Licensed. They are read from the signed license file once it has verified, never from a file that failed to verify, so the report cannot echo back numbers nobody checked. Some older builds do not print the features line.

Which copy loaded, and from where

plugin: The release of DSP that Plant 3D actually loaded, read from the bundle it was loaded from — the same number the plugin's own panel shows in its header. The word in square brackets says which kind of build this is; one installed by the Companion says customer. The number in parentheses is the technical version stamp of the file itself and reads 1.0.0.0 on every release, so ignore it and go by the release number in front. If that release is older than the one the Companion says it installed, Plant 3D has not been restarted since.
loaded from: The folder holding the plugin file Plant 3D opened. This is where it really loaded from, not where an installer meant to put it.
bundle: The Autodesk bundle folder that contains it. The Companion names each one for the Plant 3D release it serves — DspJoint2026.bundle for Plant 3D 2026 — so builds for different years can sit side by side. If this line reads (not inside a .bundle), the file was loaded directly from some folder (for example by hand with NETLOAD) rather than as an installed bundle.
install: Whether that bundle sits in the folder that belongs to your Windows account (per-user, under %APPDATA%) or the folder shared by every account on the computer (PER-MACHINE, under %PROGRAMDATA%; that value also carries a note calling it "the customer lane," which is not what the Companion installs today). other location means neither of Autodesk's two ApplicationPlugins folders. The next section explains why this matters.

Per-user and per-machine

Autodesk defines two add-in folders, both named Autodesk\ApplicationPlugins: one inside your own Windows profile and one shared by everyone who uses the computer. The Companion installs DSP into the one in your own profile, in a bundle folder named for the Plant 3D release:

%APPDATA%\Autodesk\ApplicationPlugins\DspJoint2026.bundle

The consequences follow directly from that.

It needs no administrator rights. You own that folder, so installing and updating the plugin does not ask Windows for administrator approval.
It serves the account that installed it. The trust that lets Plant 3D load the plugin without asking — the folder entry and Nutechna's certificate among your trusted publishers — is recorded in that same account. On a workstation shared by several people, each Windows account that drafts needs to open the Companion and choose Install itself; an engineer who signs in under a different account will not find the plugin until they do.
The Companion and the plugin are installed independently. An IT department can install the Companion for every user on a computer (see the IT deployment guide), but the plugin is still placed per account, and only when that person clicks to install it, with Plant 3D closed.

We use the per-user folder because it is the one that loaded in our testing: a bundle placed in the shared folder did not load on our own test computer, while the same files in the per-user folder did. We have not established whether that is true of every computer.

Two copies

Plant 3D loads every copy of an add-in that it finds. If a second copy of DSP exists somewhere else — in the shared folder, say — Plant 3D may run that one while the Companion updates the other, and nothing you install changes what you see. The bundle line is how you spot this: it names the copy that is really running. The plugin writes a small receipt each time it loads (the IT deployment guide lists it as plugin_loaded.json), and the Companion reads that receipt; when the running copy is not the one it installed, the UPDATE PLUGIN page reads INSTALLED BUT PLANT 3D IS RUNNING ANOTHER COPY, names the other folder, and tells you to remove or rename it and restart Plant 3D.

Whether Plant 3D trusts the folder

trusted

Plant 3D keeps a list of folders it trusts to load code from, and this line says whether the folder DSP loaded from is covered. It asks Plant 3D itself — the list is Plant 3D's own setting TRUSTEDPATHS — rather than reporting what the installer believes it wrote, because the two can disagree. The value is one of:

not required here — the folder is under one of the two ApplicationPlugins folders, where Plant 3D loaded bundles without the folder being listed when we tested it. The line adds (and it IS listed…) when it also appears in the list. This is what you will normally see after installing from the Companion. We state it as the measurement it is, not as a promise on Autodesk's behalf.
YES — covered by TRUSTEDPATHS entry … — a folder outside the standard locations that the list does cover. An entry ending in three dots covers that folder and everything beneath it.
NO — outside a standard bundle location … — Plant 3D may refuse or warn on load. Choose Install again on the Companion's UPDATE PLUGIN page.
cannot tell — the plugin could not work out its own folder.

trustedpaths

The raw list behind that verdict, exactly as Plant 3D returns it. It is printed so the verdict can be checked by a person rather than taken on trust; (empty or unreadable) means Plant 3D returned nothing.

This is the trusted folder. The "Signed File Not in Trusted Folder" prompt that Plant 3D can show at start-up is about a different list: the trusted publishers of your Windows account. Install adds NUTECHNA, INC. there. DSP_SELFCHECK does not print that list; the UPDATE PLUGIN page reads it and says whether the next start will be silent. If the prompt appears, Always Load answers it, as does choosing Install again.

The Plant 3D underneath

runtime: The .NET runtime that Plant 3D is hosting the plugin in. DSP needs the one that Plant 3D 2026.2 and newer provide (.NET 10); Plant 3D 2026.0 and 2026.1 host an older one. If you can read this line at all, the plugin loaded, so the host is a good one — printing it makes that checkable rather than assumed.
product: The product name and release number as Plant 3D itself reports them. Send it when you write to us; it removes any guessing about which Plant 3D you are running.

The license

license

The plugin's one-word verdict on the license file it found, followed by a short support code that begins DSP-. The code is fixed for each verdict, so the same state always shows the same code, and it lets us see exactly which state you are in without a description.

Licensed — a signed license file made for this computer, within its dates, and renewed within the last hour. DSP works.
Missing — there is no license file on this computer. That is what the plugin sees both when no seat is checked out and when the Companion was never signed in here; the two look the same on disk. Open the Companion, sign in if you are not already, and choose Check out a seat on the ACCOUNT page.
Stale — the file is genuine but has not been renewed in the last hour, so the plugin could not confirm with Nutechna's license server recently. It does not mean your license has ended. Keep the Companion running and signed in; drafting resumes as soon as the connection is back. (How the hour works is on How licensing and seats work.)

Any other word means the plugin is declining for a different reason. The first steps are the same — open the Companion, sign in, and check out a seat — and if the word does not change, send us the report with this line in it.

token file

present or NOT PRESENT: whether the license file, license.token, exists in the Nutechna folder under your Windows account's local application data. The Companion writes it; NOT PRESENT goes with a Missing verdict.

org

The firm the license was issued to. If it names the wrong firm, tell us.

expires

The date and time, in UTC, when your firm's license period ends, as written in the signed file. It is not the hour a renewal is good for, and the Companion renewing the file every few minutes does not move it; only a change to your firm's license itself does, such as a renewal. After that moment the plugin no longer treats the license as current.

seats

The number of seats on your firm's license.

features

On current builds, the names of the optional capabilities your firm's license includes, or (none). It is read from the signed license, so it shows what the license grants, not what a plan or a price list says.

The machine

machine: The first eight characters of this computer's fingerprint, with a note that it is truncated. A license file is made for one computer; comparing this line across two computers shows that they differ.
local time: The date, time and offset from UTC on this computer's own clock. It is printed in your local time, while expires is in UTC, so allow for the offset when comparing the two.

Sending it to us

Copy the lines from the command line and send them to support@nutechna.com, with a sentence about what you were doing. If a drafting command ever stops with a message that quotes a support code and mentions DSP_SELFCHECK, send the report together with that code; the two together tell us which command stopped and what state the plugin was in.

Questions we hear

Does DSP_SELFCHECK send anything to Nutechna?: No. It reads your computer and writes to your command line. The last line of the report says "Nothing was sent," and that is the whole story; the only way the lines reach us is you sending them.
My license line says something other than Licensed, but DSP_SELFCHECK still ran. Is that a bug?: No — it is the point. The command is built to run when the license is the problem, so that you can see the state it is in.
The install line says PER-MACHINE. Is something wrong?: The line reports where the copy sits, nothing more. PER-MACHINE means the copy Plant 3D loaded is in the folder shared by every account on this computer instead of the one the Companion installs into. If you expected the Companion's copy, open UPDATE PLUGIN: it will say if Plant 3D is running another copy than the one it installed.
My trusted line says "not required here." Does that mean Plant 3D will not ask about the publisher?: No. That line is about the folder. Whether Plant 3D stops to ask about the publisher is settled by your Windows account's trusted publishers, which the UPDATE PLUGIN page reports.
A colleague on the same computer does not have DSP in Plant 3D.: The Companion installs the plugin for one Windows account at a time. Your colleague opens the Companion under their own account and chooses Install on UPDATE PLUGIN, with Plant 3D closed.
The plugin line shows an older release than the Companion says it installed.: Plant 3D loads the plugin when it starts and holds it until it closes. Close Plant 3D and start it again. Keeping DSP current explains why the Companion and the plugin update separately.