More users than licenses: How to kick a user?

Rhino Rhino for Windows
1

Hello

We have 6 Rhino Licenses. Most of the time this enough. But it happens from time to time that someone forgets to close Rhino on their computer at home (for example).

In this case we would like to kick/log off that computer, so a license becomes available.

Is there a way to do this ?

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2

you could use the zoo (internet required of course), you would have to enter all the licences online it will ask you then if you want to use it on this computer and it will knock it out on the other computer till its being launched or activated there again, not sure what happens if 2 people decide to battle for once licence.

3

I find it a little bit difficult to grasp what the zoo exactly is.

  • Does the ā€˜masterā€™ PC have to be always on?
  • Do all users have to be on the same LAN?
  • Can you still log in on the Cloud Zoo, when you are not at work?
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4

where ever you are with access to internet, it will request the license once in a week (or every couple of days i am not sure how often exactly) if you dont log in from a different computer

no, none of your computer have to stay online, all the licences will be handled from an external server that is provided by mcneel

5

Youā€™ve already reviewed this McNeel page, I presume, along with the link to the LAN Zoo page?

https://wiki.mcneel.com/zoo/home
Your initial question regarding how to retrieve a dormant checked out license is addressed in the link:
https://wiki.mcneel.com/zoo/recovering_licence

but in fact administration of licenses is usually restricted to a specific authorized individual or two, so individual users canā€™t retrieve licenses as far as I know. In fact I donā€™t believe any user can find out who is using all the other available licenses, nor is a Zoo administrator able to know whether a computer with a checked-out license is actually in active use or idle. In a situation like yours with only 6 users I presume it is practical to ā€œsimplyā€ poll all the other users by message, email or telephone to discover who can give up their license or negotiate a time when a license can be returned. I donā€™t know how itā€™s handled in organizations with 10ā€™s or 100ā€™s of licenses.

This reply is from a single standalone licensed individual using Rhino Zoo documentation, so if anything Iā€™ve said is wrong or misleading I hope an experienced Zoo administrator will chime in.

2 Likes
6

Note there are two Zoos: the LAN Zoo and the Cloud Zoo. Iā€™m a single user with one license and user two systems and the Cloud Zoo lets me easily move between machines.

1 Like
7

Sorry for the late reply. Holidays got in the way :slight_smile:

In our enterprise, we have the same issue with Autodesk programs. We have more users/computers than licenses. But most of the time not simuntaneously. Whenever more users than there are licenses try to use the software, it gets handled like this:

The person who tries to log in last will get a message on screen:
ā€œAll licences are in useā€ and can see an overview of which users are logged in.
Next to the users there is a ā€˜pauseā€™ button. This pauses their session and allows the new user to start working.

Now the user who gets logged out will get the same message. Ofcourse preferably you log out a user which is currently idle, so this doesnā€™t get bounced around :slight_smile: But we only have 6 users or so, so this rarely happens.