topic Re: Solutions for drafters working at home in Project data & BIM

Solutions for drafters working at home

Anonymous — Fri, 26 May 2006 18:17:08 GMT

Just curious, what solutions others are using to enable an employee to work from home? I have a file serving solution, but would like to know what others are using for employees to access security keys from home on both mac and windows platforms.

Re: Solutions for drafters working at home

Anonymous — Fri, 26 May 2006 18:22:20 GMT

The firms I know just trust their people with hardware keys. I don't know much about the network keys and less about checking them out or using remote access to enable ArchiCAD with them. The physical key seems the simplest procedure if available. It is advisable to make sure that you have insurance coverage in case of loss.

Re: Solutions for drafters working at home

TomWaltz — Fri, 26 May 2006 18:30:15 GMT

K&A instituted some policies regarding working at home:
1) It must be a teamwork project. The person signs in and uses the "satellite library" option, then saves everything to a flash drive, network drive, or other transport medium. This provides a solid method of making sure no one overwrites their work while they have a file out.
2) The key may be taken home but requires written or email approval of both the CAD Manager and the partner in charge of the project with the understanding "you break it, you bought it." The keys in the office are single keys, not network keys.
3) Employee is responsible for all data backup and transferral. Time working at home is only billable once the files are successfully "Sent & Recieved."
4) File transmission, preparation, and duplication is on the employee's own time since they are choosing to work off-site.
5) K&A IT staff is not required to assist employees wishing to work at home. Such assistance is solely at their own discretion. (If someone can barely turn a computer on, the company is not going to pay them to work off-site or waste time supporting them).

Call it draconian, but this set of policies enables people who are savvy enough to work on their own to do so without incurring any cost to the company (and barely any time "donated" on their part).

Re: Solutions for drafters working at home

Anonymous — Fri, 26 May 2006 18:34:57 GMT

I did not know insurance was available. Has anyone had experiences with a lost/stolen/damaged key? Did insurance cover it?

Re: Solutions for drafters working at home

Anonymous — Fri, 26 May 2006 18:35:16 GMT

TomWaltz wrote:
Call it draconian, but this set of policies enables people who are savvy enough to work on their own to do so without incurring any cost to the company (and barely any time "donated" on their part).

As an independent consultant I have been mercifully spared these sort of considerations. It looks like you have a reasonable set of rules considering the potential risks and difficulties. Like the "paperless office" telecommuting still has a ways to go in sorting itself out.

Re: Solutions for drafters working at home

Stephen Dolbee — Fri, 26 May 2006 18:43:43 GMT

Matthew wrote:
The firms I know just trust their people with hardware keys.

That is the case with us. My boss gave me the key to take home. We started with 2 licenses, but after several years of non-use, he must have concluded he will never learn the program, and opted to purchase only one. I go to the office about once a week to plot/pick up new work/get paid/etc. I usually bring the key with me just in case there are any last-minute changes. Do you know if plots/prints can be made in Archicad 10 without the key? If not, that could be a problem for us.

Steve

Re: Solutions for drafters working at home

Stephen Dolbee — Fri, 26 May 2006 18:46:48 GMT

scottobrien wrote:
I did not know insurance was available. Has anyone had experiences with a lost/stolen/damaged key? Did insurance cover it?

I thought key insurance was included for those who purchased a subscription. Not sure, though.

Steve

Re: Solutions for drafters working at home

Anonymous — Fri, 26 May 2006 23:57:41 GMT

I have, after many years of working on my own, opted for a subscription and did so because of the key insurance. I have not lost or had one stolen, but think of the possibilities and think there aren't many that are too exciting. loosing a key whether my personal or the one from the office ( v10 as my license has not arrived) is an expensive bit of not necessary.

My boss has allowed me to work a part of the week from home as the time for me is very productive - not many phone calls or other interruptions. I allows for study time that is just not available at the office. So far so good.

The big question for me is the issue of how best to use the teamwork functions to be able to work remotely. I have, after much consideration, taken the time to segregate custom vs. standard libraries and think that Tom Waltz is correct in keeping the "standard" ones on a local HD and the project on the server -- the locals NEVER changed and the project able to save the odd stuff for the individual job.

Lew Bishop
AC9 & 10 G5 Dual at work
PB 15" G4 1.5 at home
OS X 10.4.6

Re: Solutions for drafters working at home

Anonymous — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 08:04:57 GMT

We will soon be implementing a solution for this here. Hopefully we won't need to buy a bunch of stand alone licences.

I was thinking of allowing access to our network licence via vpn. Has anyone tried this? I think we would need to use the wknet mode of wibu-key if this is even possible??? Security is the biggest issue for us. We don't use teamwork mode and would probably save the plan files locally and bring them into the office on cd.

Basicly thinking that the users could vpn into the dirty network and have access to the wibu-key server through an open port on the firewall. (that server is on a separate 'clean' network. I believe it uses udp on port 22347 by default.

Re: Solutions for drafters working at home

Barry Kelly — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 09:03:45 GMT

adambutler wrote:
We will soon be implementing a solution for this here. Hopefully we won't need to buy a bunch of stand alone licences.

I was thinking of allowing access to our network licence via vpn. Has anyone tried this? I think we would need to use the wknet mode of wibu-key if this is even possible??? Security is the biggest issue for us. We don't use teamwork mode and would probably save the plan files locally and bring them into the office on cd.

Basicly thinking that the users could vpn into the dirty network and have access to the wibu-key server through an open port on the firewall. (that server is on a separate 'clean' network. I believe it uses udp on port 22347 by default.

So long as a user can gain access to your network, either by dialling in directly or via VPN, then they will be able to access any network key on that network.
They just need to make sure their WIBU-key settings have the correct network addresses for the licenses.
I don't know the ins and outs of networking nor network security - I leave that up to the IT guys.
All I have found is that it can be a little slow in response when Archicad is checking for a valid license if the network is being used heavily (i.e. office hours).
After hours seems faster when there is less traffic.
I still prefer to take a key home.

Barry.

Re: Solutions for drafters working at home

Anonymous — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 22:58:16 GMT

As a super cheap idea, I put a sticker on all of our keys that says "$20 Reward" in large letters, then it has our company name, address, and 800 number. We haven't lost any yet, but if we do, and some good Samaritan finds it, it's only $20.

Of course, this isn't nearly as fast or safe as the insurance, but it's worth a shot.

Re: Solutions for drafters working at home

Anonymous — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 17:19:48 GMT

adambutler wrote:
We will soon be implementing a solution for this here. Hopefully we won't need to buy a bunch of stand alone licences.

I was thinking of allowing access to our network licence via vpn. Has anyone tried this? I think we would need to use the wknet mode of wibu-key if this is even possible??? Security is the biggest issue for us. We don't use teamwork mode and would probably save the plan files locally and bring them into the office on cd.

Basicly thinking that the users could vpn into the dirty network and have access to the wibu-key server through an open port on the firewall. (that server is on a separate 'clean' network. I believe it uses udp on port 22347 by default.

Here at my office we have actually opted to go ahead and get individual licenses, and think of it as a possitive thing because it does allow for our staff to take a key home, if needed. Most of the time it would be our senior staff.

The main reason we decided to get individual licenses is because if we have a network license and something happens to it, the key breaks or something major happens to that machine we have 11 users that are then unable to work. Lets say the key breaks at 4:00pm Pacific time on a Monday. We order a new one, ASAP even if it were sent over night it probably wouldnt be mailed out until tuesday. We get it Wednesday. That means we just had 11 users unable to work for atleast 10 hours. Losing over 110 man hours is not an option.

Rob Oberle
IT Manager/Designer
MAC OS X10.4.X/G5 MacIntel

Re: Solutions for drafters working at home

Anonymous — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 04:21:07 GMT

The last comment is a real issue - or key server just went awol and caused us a lot of grief - at the moment we're using another spare (and old) pc just to do the job, and not lose any more time!

Re: Solutions for drafters working at home

Anonymous — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 04:30:51 GMT

Matthew wrote:
It is advisable to make sure that you have insurance coverage in case of loss.

I was told not long ago by tech support that the cost to replace a lost key is only $100, so it might be more expensive to have insurance all the time than to just pay to replace it if it happens to get lost. Once I found that out, I relaxed a bit and don't worry as much about losing mine. The worst consequences would be time lost that I couldn't work, really - and as I recently discovered, time lost trying to get add-ons updated to work with the new key.

Damaged keys are replaced for free, as long as you send the old one back.

Wendy

Re: Solutions for drafters working at home

Anonymous — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 04:34:03 GMT

Stephen wrote:
Matthew wrote:
Do you know if plots/prints can be made in Archicad 10 without the key? If not, that could be a problem for us.

No, you can't, since you need the key to start the program. You *could* print it on another machine that has a key, though - but then you potentially run into the problem of it not finding all the objects in the model. If your office is set up with standards and your setup doesn't vary at all, this ought not be a problem.

The other possible solution would be to make a PDF at home and then you can print that anywhere.

Wendy

Re: Solutions for drafters working at home

__archiben — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 04:41:33 GMT

Wendy wrote:
Stephen wrote:
Do you know if plots/prints can be made in Archicad 10 without the key? If not, that could be a problem for us.
No, you can't, since you need the key to start the program.

actually wendy, you CAN print/plot/publish without the key in AC10.

because of the plotmaker integration and the number of offices using a standalone plotmaker purely for publishing, the print function was re-instated in the demo. it just doesn't do saving, copying or teamwork . . .

Re: Solutions for drafters working at home

Anonymous — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 05:58:22 GMT

~/archiben wrote:
actually wendy, you CAN print/plot/publish without the key in AC10.

because of the plotmaker integration and the number of offices using a standalone plotmaker purely for publishing, the print function was re-instated in the demo. it just doesn't do saving, copying or teamwork . . .

I had no idea, Ben! Thanks for the clarification. How would you go about doing this? I won't need to, I don't think, but I'm curious.

Wendy

Re: Solutions for drafters working at home

TomWaltz — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 13:49:42 GMT

Wendy wrote:
~/archiben wrote:
actually wendy, you CAN print/plot/publish without the key in AC10.

because of the plotmaker integration and the number of offices using a standalone plotmaker purely for publishing, the print function was re-instated in the demo. it just doesn't do saving, copying or teamwork . . .
I had no idea, Ben! Thanks for the clarification. How would you go about doing this? I won't need to, I don't think, but I'm curious.

Wendy

Open Archicad as you would normally. You will get a couple warning dialogs about being in Demo mode. Once it's open, print or plot like you normally would.