To which end could the modernization include a website where a properly authenticated user can take a look at the list of Rhino licenses they own?
Or does this already exist and I don’t know about it because I’ve never needed to inquire?
Yes, that’s also part of the roadmap. It is a surprisingly simple idea with
a huge number of pitfalls and corner cases.
Of course, that would be a next step once the data is cleaned up.
we, as dealers, make it a very mandatory point to keep track, or help our customers keep track, of exactly that information on a sale by sale basis.
not hard or diffcult, just takes a very little minimum of discipline and method.
but, in the end, perhaps licenses (and corresponding) versions should be issued by the sw house, like AD et al. do: then, there never are any questions
Thanks for working to keep all this data straight. We really appreciate it!
One thing we’ve noticed is that even though some resellers keep their data straight, customers don’t always buy from the same reseller. And when those customers call us for information about their licenses, we are limited by what the customers actually registered. With license validation we have much better insight into how people use their licenses, and which licenses are related to each other.
What’s worse is that some companies have multiple branches, or the purchasing person changes, or they don’t have a system for tracking licenses. So those Rhino 4’s from 8 years ago, that were upgraded to Rhino 5’s 2 years ago aren’t really cleanly connected from the customer’s point of view. We’re hoping to make those connections at our end and help customers understand what licenses they actually have.
How come you don’t follow the common industry practice of going to the customer’s site(s) to audit usage and charging them huge penalties for any actual or alleged discrepancies, suing if necessary?
We would probably hold off on running R6 for six months to a year after release, so we were not forced into becoming part of the inevitable debugging process. Nothing ruins confidence in a product like having it repeatedly crash whilst the patches are being written.
Other than that, not having to load R2, R3, then R4 into each machine in order to install R5 would be a blessing.
While you are looking at the license thing, you may want to work on porting the Zoo as a service on a server, rather than requiring us to install it on an ancient PC running 24/7 just to hand out the licenses.
That hasn’t been necessary since V4…
From here:
Question: What previous version info do I need to install my Rhino 5 upgrade?
Answer: The Rhino 5 upgrade installer will install if one of the following is true:
Rhino 4.0 is installed
Rhino 3.0 is installed
Rhino 2.0 is installed
Rhino 4.0 key code is entered during installation
Rhino 3.0 key code is entered during installation
Rhino 2.0 key code is entered during installation
There is no need to install the previous version. Just have the key codes ready.
Yes, definitely. I get frequent client requests for this.
–Mitch
Have to tell that to the disks I’ve got. The last install of R5 definitely prompted for previous versions!
Might be an issue with having three installs on five workstations with The Zoo doing all the license work?
- Don’t install from the old discs, always from the latest downloaded version.
- In principle if you’re using Zoo 5 or 6, it should also work like a normal install of V5
Adding Rhino Licenses to LAN Zoo [McNeel Wiki]
–Mitch
We run our Zoo as a service on a server. We haven’t had to run it on a PC for years. Maybe our IT guys have worked some kind of magic, but I know our Zoo is always running on one of our servers.
Back when I was taking care of IT duties around here I purchased a product from Genie Solutions to run the Zoo as a service, but I think that was probably 10 years ago. I’m pretty sure we haven’t used that for a long time.
Dan
According to our IT consultant, Zoo is a configured as a program rather than a service, so although it will happily run on a recent server OS, it will not auto shutdown or restart following periodic server reboots after patches, updates etc.
This necessitated us remote desk-topping into the server to launch the software, requiring a user with the necessary privledges and skills. It’s just easier and more secure to run it on a PC on the network (though less elegant)
I believe that there are apps that “convert” programs into services, but we have not tried these.
Then you are running an ancient version of the Zoo.
The Zoo 5 and now 6 have been running as a Service for years.
Just to clarify things a bit, Zoo 4.0, 5, and 6 all run as a Windows Service. You can confirm this by checking the Service applet in Control Panel.
There was an earlier versions of the Zoo, 1.0, that ran as a program, not a service. It supported Rhino’s 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0 (I I believe)…
Yep, that’s definitely in the works, but won’t be available in time for Rhino 6 release. We’re still laying the foundations for being able to support online services for customers in a secure way. The first step is having a robust login system that allows users to login to our web site, to Rhino, and other McNeel services. Without that, we can’t really host your licenses on our server.
No kidding. Is this your experience with Rhino in the past, or just with other software you use?
Sporadically, on some of the new features introduced in R5, in the early days, and we have periodically reverted back to 32 bit which seems to tackle certain tasks more successfully!
More so with other CAD software, to the extent that we would currently not consider installing major updates unless there was the ability to switch back to a previous version on the desktop.
There may be a level of confusion on our part, as John Brock advises us that Zoo will run as a local service - the link supplied to us by Simply Rhino when we set it up must have been a previous version. I must look for a link to the latest version.
We certainly would not currently consider new software that validated on a remote server. In the last six months we (and all other users, I believe) have had two instances where the Boston based license server has locked the users out of their own software, requiring a full cycle of uninstallation, reinstallation and reactivation. Half a day goes down the pan, once you factor in 5 hours of time difference. You know who you are - 3d S*********s.
Since you guys are considering future licensing schemes I’d love to see a a couple of options for zoo licensing:
-
Basic improvement: being able to run Rhino away from the office without having to login to our VPN, sometimes this is not possible or reliable.
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Ideal improvement: being able to launch a zoo-managed Rhino without even having any internet connection. Maybe you can check for licensing rights/authenticity once a month or so? Instead of every single time that Rhino is launching.
I think this is how Adobe does it, so you can launch their programs without Internet (useful when traveling). Spotify does a similar thing to allow you to launch the app offline too and play your local files.
Thx!
As a temporary fix does “CheckOutLicense” and “CheckInLicnese” work for you? The amount of time the license can be checked out for can be controlled