Using Rhino Remotely During COVID-19

Translations: Español, Français, Deutsch, Italiano, 日本語, 한국어, 中文(简体), and 中文(繁 體)

During the corona virus outbreak, a growing number of schools and companies are mandating that people learn and work remotely. The ways McNeel supports working from home vary by the version of Rhino and what kind of customer you are.

Float your licenses using one of these methods:

  • Zoo works best in a school or company LAN, and with additional configuration can work over VPN connections. Works with Rhino 5 and 6.
  • Cloud Zoo allows individual users and teams to share Rhino 6 licenses anywhere in the world.

Rhino 6
Company System Administrator

Company Employee

  • Work with your employer’s IT department to make your licenses available in a Cloud Zoo Team. Your administrator will tell you how to configure Rhino to access their licenses.
  • Use your own license:

School Lab Administrator

Student or Teacher

  • Work with your school’s IT department to make the school’s Educational Lab License available in a Cloud Zoo Team. Your administrator will tell you how to configure Rhino to access their licenses.
  • Use your own license:

Rhino 5
Company System Administrator

  • Upgrade to Rhino 6, then follow the instructions above
    - or -
  • Set up a VPN server and instruct your employees how to connect to the VPN to access the licenses in your Zoo server (this configuration is beyond what McNeel can help you set up). Use the Zoo Diagnostics tools to test your configuration.

Company Employee

  • Work with your employer’s IT department. Your administrator will tell you how to configure Rhino to access their licenses.
  • Use your own license:

School Lab Administrator

  • Upgrade to Rhino 6, then follow the instructions above
  • Set up a VPN server and instruct your students how to connect to the VPN to access the licenses in your Zoo server (this configuration is beyond what McNeel can help you set up). Use the Zoo Diagnostics tools to test your configuration.

Student or Teacher

  • Work with your school’s IT department. Your administrator will tell you how to configure Rhino to access their licenses.
  • Use your own license:
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Here is a PDF in French (translation of the above with links) in case anyone wants it…

Télétravail avec Rhino.pdf (139.9 KB)

(real French speakers feel free to edit for grammar) :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Hi since our whole Office needs to work with Rhino through RMD thanks to the Corona Virus, I was wondering if there is a known way to get this to work with Remote Desktop.

Probably there are more people struggling with this.

Thanks
Martin

@MartinIC Running Rhino via Remote Desktop works, but the graphics performance can be pretty bad. Have you tried it? What happened?

@brian
Yes we are using it for large Models, which are located at our office server. The Shaded views is making trouble. We use a custom ghosted view with 1% transparency, which is better, but not good.

We are still trying to find a good workflow for the office using remote Desktop. (VPN alone is not going to work, due to the large file size)

What I found online, is that it apperently has to do something with the OpenGL support.
If Rhino is already running at the time you are connecting via RMD, the issue is not occuring. But the workflow of opening new instances for every file (we need to work on many files simultaniously) is a pain.
Also - if noone is at the office, there is no way to open it.

I have not tried Rhino 7 in that matter.

We bought GeForce Graphic cards, not Quadro Cards (which seems to be part of the Problem).

OpenGL 3 support could help - not sure which Version Rhino is using.
https://community.esri.com/thread/225251-enabling-gpu-rendering-on-windows-server-2016-windows-10-rdp

If possible you could try using VNC for remoting into your desktop. This does not use a separate display driver, but shows exactly what is on your desktop. For lack of good OpenGL support in RDP I use VNC precisely because of that.

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currently using Teamviewer to access our machines at work.the resolution and general response is far from ideal but itrs the best we can do for now. But I have noticed that I need to repeatedly need to refresh and switch viewports after commands to see the changes. I also noticed this while sharing my screen with someone over google hangouts. maybe these are related?

To me VNC is more a workaround, rather than a solution. There is “in general” OpenGL support for RMD, so it “could” work. (Rhino 5 works)

I do see the IT infrastructure (brandwith) struggeling in Frankfurt because “everybody” is using VPN and homeoffice these days (and who is not using VPN is watching Netflix :wink: )

So I believe using RMD would be better, if we can get it to work.

Paperspace is another workround.

I have a small business operating with Rhino 6 and rhinocam, thought I may go and self isolate…and check out Rhino 7, If I use my Rhino 6 licence will it lock me out of the Rhino 6 at the workshop…or can I use both? (6 AND 7)

Keep well!

I don’t think OpenGL support for RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) is very elaborate when using desktop OS on both ends of the connection. Rhino 5 uses OpenGL technology from the late 1990s (OpenGL 1.2); Rhino 6 uses OpenGL technology from about 2010 (OpenGL 3.3 and 4.1).

We’ve also noticed that RDP performs poorly, and don’t have plans to improve it. It’s months of work, and there are many better options out there.

Some other options are: upgrade your office internet connection, and your user’s home internet connections, and move the files back and forth. Or, spin up some AWS machines that host desktops, and run Rhino there (as well as storing all your data near the AWS instances). Or, use VNC.

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If your Rhino 6 license is in the Cloud Zoo, you can float it between Rhino 6 and 7 in both locations with no hassle. You can keep Rhino running in both places, but only one can be in use at a time.

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@MartinIC I haven’t tried it, but I’ve heard it works well with CAD (GPU support): https://www.nomachine.com/

why put up Rhino 5 then require that users of rhino 5 upgrade to rhino 6? is there no support for rhino 5?

The cloud zoo does not work with Rhino 5 licenses, so that is the only limitation. If you already have a Rhino 5 license it should continue to work as before.

Hello,

Those are two different options, not sequential steps so you can upgrade to Rhino 6 or set up VPN. You do not need to do both.

Hope this helps, stay safe!

Graham

Anyone tried this yet? We’re not having much luck with Remote Desktop, even setting up a remote login is a cluster. Our home and office setups are proving a headache for our IT contractor.

Hi Martin,

We sometimes work through remote desktop and it is just like opening up any other program, once you are connected to the remote desktop, However, the video driver is only 64mb, so display is really awful, and it makes it difficult to work. I would recommend trying to set up some sort of local installation on employees computers with a floating cloud / licence server…

Hi,

we found out, that the display problems do not occur, when the local mashine (the one that is remote controlled) has a Quadro Card installed. GeForce Cards have issues. It seems to be a driver support issue with Remote Desktop at least in some cases.

Our Setup is as follows:

  • Laptop Computer at home connected via Lancom VPN
  • strong Workstation in the office -.now with Quadro Graphic cards - for good display support and fast Network server access to our large files, linked blocks and Worksessions (usual File Size 1-2 GBs)
  • Connection through Remote Desktop

Our admin did not recommend the usage of VNC for data security reasons.

Martin

Hi @brian, Thank you for the detailed list of options to use Rhino remotely. I have a few questions in regards to our scenario here at the university. I am teaching an introduction course for Rhino and Grasshopper with 150 students. So far we offered the students who didn’t own their own laptop and rhino license to use the computer pools in the faculty. Those are two pools with 36 and 15 computers respectively that shared one EDU lab pack of 30 licenses over the Zoo. Now we have to offer the university rhino licenses over the internet and without access to the computer pools.
So my questions: If we get one EDU lab pack (30 licenses) into a Cloud Zoo team where we add all the 150 students, what will the experience for our students be when:

  1. … a student opens rhino and a license is still available (less than 30 licenses in use)? Does the student have to enter the rhino log in details each time they open rhino?
  2. … a student opens Rhino and a license is not available at the moment (30 license already in use), what message will the student see? Are other students currently using a license being kicked out?
  3. … a student closes rhino. Does the license become available for other students immediately?

I have read the documentation that is online such as this one https://wiki.mcneel.com/zoo/to-cloud-zoo but I could not get a clear picture of the whole experience using a team in the Cloud Zoo yet.

Greetings,
Anton