Trying to use r8 on an offline computer?

Rhino Rhino for Windows
1

sometimes I’m working in an area where I don’t have a connection to the internet , is there any way that I can use r8 in this situation?

2

Yes. Two possibilities.
If your license is in the Cloud Zoo, make sure you start Rhino and renew the license lease just before leaving. You will then have around two weeks in which you can use Rhino while offline.

If you do this often, then maybe it will be better to remove the license from the cloud zoo and install it fixed to a machine. That way you will always be able to use Rhino anywhere, no internet connection needed to get a license.

3

okay great I can do that before I leave in the morning .Thanks

4

As a full offline user my knowledge of Zoo use is just what I read here. Whenever the Zoo based offline schemes are discussed the phrase “around” or “approximately” or something similar is used to describe the time period allowed before another visit to the Zoo is required. In this electronic age when GPS signals (for example) are measured to the nanosecond why is this?

5

Looks like it’s 20 days… to the nanosecond.

(To check I closed all Rhino instances here, opened a new one, went to notifications to make sure I got the license, then went to Options>Licenses and looked at the timestamp for the expiry date)

6

Ah! So calling it “2 weeks” leaves almost another week of grace period for those who are forgetful or like to push things. :slightly_smiling_face:

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7

Does the act of starting Rhino renew the license or is there another explicit step required?

8

Yes, it should. However, if you know you need to work offline later, after starting Rhino go to the Notifications panel and make sure you see “License obtained from Rhino account…” to make sure it actually was able to get the license. Occasionally there is a communication problem and you will see “Unable to refresh license…”

Also under Options>Licenses it should show you the new expiry date.

1 Like
9

More detail:
The Cloud Zoo tools are an Internet based, floating license manager so you can float your single computer V6 and newer license between multiple computers.
Since you can’t be guaranteed an Internet connection 100% of the time, we use an automatically refreshing license “lease” on your computer.
Here’s how it works:

  • When you start Rhino, Rhino calls your default Internet browser to go to your login account. It checks that you have a valid license in the Cloud Zoo associated with your account. A local license lease good for about 2 weeks is saved on your computer. This is shown in Options > Licenses as the “Offline access until…” date. Check it whenever you want.
  • When you start Rhino, if your local lease is 10% or more used up, and you have an Internet connection, your lease is updated automatically.
  • If you do not have an Internet connection when you start Rhino, the license lease refresh fails silently.
    If this failure continues for several days, then Rhino will tell you that the license is going to expire in a few days if you don’t connect to the Internet.
  • For the vast majority of Rhino users, it is extremely rare they would not have an Internet connection at least once every couple of weeks, so this offline access system will work with the user never knowing it’s happening. It just works.
  • For people that use a laptop only for traveling, they will need to start Rhino on that laptop while they have an Internet connection. This will update the local license lease on that computer so Rhino can be used on the train, plane, or car, while the user is away from Internet.

Does that make sense?

3 Likes
10

Thanks to both of you. That clarifies for me.