PC*MILER Connect has two basic components: engine and trips.

The Connect engine does the license enforcement, trip management, distance calculation, and report generation. The engine is opened (PCMSOpenServer) and a connection to it remains open for the life of the program. You must close the engine (PCMSCloseServer) before your application exits or Windows won’t free the resources used by PC*MILER Connect, nor will it unlock the current license. You won't be able to rerun your application if you don’t close down the engine when your application exits.

Trips are collections of stops, options and reports. You must build a trip to access any Connect features other than simple distance calculations. A trip is created by asking the Connect engine for a new trip handle, then setting up the trip with a list of stops and new options. You can then calculate the trip’s route and distance, and extract any of the trip’s PC*MILER reports.