Upgrading to ArchiCAD V13

[Anonymous]

Well my support subscription invoice has just arrived so with the current state of the economy I had to check, Is the upgrade to version 13 worth me having.

I checked with my reseller who said the only thing he can tell me is that ArchiCAD 13 will have better team work. That would be fine if I was a large practice, but I am not. So for now ArchiCAD 12 will do just fine and I can save the money.

Unless there is a significant improvement in the tools why bother?

[Karl Ottenstein]

rwallis wrote:
- Most important: Now GS has encouraged the use of net licenses in large offices, do we all need to go back to individual usb dongles to work remotely on a TW2 project - or is there more to come from GS about how licenses are handled? (A la revit electronic keys that can be emailed etc?).

I have not seen anything on the GS web site yet (?), but my local reseller has this page:
http://graphisoftwest.com/pageview.aspx?id=30851

which mentions a 'flexible license management' in the right column and bottom rows. I assume more details on this will be announced soon.

Cheers,
Karl

[Anonymous]

mmm.interesting that it looks rather like it will cost to get this new kind of license...I would have thought it would be attractive for GS to get everyone to use this method...we'll have to wait and see

also amused to see (yet again) Australian projects feature in the marketing, and yet GS Australia have nothing about 13 on their website! No marketing emails to the local user base. Nothing. maybe there is no one there....? Oh well maybe the one receiving our subscription money...😉

[Anonymous]

Here is more information on the new CodeMeter key from Graphisoft:

License Borrowing via the new CodeMeter Dongle:

If your firm has multiple (network) licenses to use ArchiCAD or other GRAPHISOFT programs, the License Borrowing feature allows individual users to “borrow” a license key temporarily if they will be going offsite, to enable use of the software even without being connected to the network.

License borrowing is available if your firm uses the new CodeMeter network protection key (dongle). This new key is made of metal (very high-tech looking and slightly bigger than the normal dongle) and you can run over it with a panzer and it probably still will keep working! This is a new dongle from WIBU that you will need to pay a bit extra for to enable the sharing capabilities (prices will vary by country).

To access this License Borrowing, ArchiCAD 13 must be running on your machine with a network license.

The CodeMeter software lets you know that you have borrowed a license for the product, with a particular expiration date. In the License Information dialog box:
• A license can be loaned out or borrowed to a specified user.
• The selected product is now shown with a Return button: click here when you are ready to return the license. The expiration date of the borrowed license is shown in the Product Information section.
• If your license expires before you return it, the program will automatically return it for you, even if you are not online, so it can be loaned to someone else.

Benefits:
Huge flexibility in an office with multiple copies of ArchiCAD and other Graphisoft products to manage the loaning out of licenses. You can loan out licenses to anyone on your project team, including engineers. There is no need to worry about lost keys or managing individual “floater’ dongles and no need to have a VPN to assign licenses.

No final info on costs at this time in the US.

[Karl Frost]

That CodeMeter Key sounds brilliant! This is something we've been thinking about for ages to improve our ability to work out of the office, especially as our Office manager has been asking for strategies to deal with something closing the office down, such as swine flu quarantine and other (outrageous) scenarios.
And, as an added benefit, there's the AC tank library part so you can do a 3d simulation of the key being run over by a panzer 😄

[Anonymous]

Interesting reading! - especially as GS leaves the management and control in the hands of the users.
I had assumed we'd be seeing some sort of internet based activation style of setup like revit or artlantis use (i.e. interaction with a GS based server over the internet). I've no experience with the former, but with the artlantis I had some experiences where the activate/deactivate step corrupts and you must ring to get it reset...
This approach will certainly keep IT departments happy...

[Christiaan]

This is very cool. Look forward to seeing the pricing for UK.

[owen]

Thanks for the info Karl ... that sounds like very good news indeed! Realistic real-time collaboration worldwide will be quite revolutionary. Exciting times ahead i think.

rwallis wrote:
The news that little bandwidth is needed to interact with a TW2 server when accessed over the internet may sound impressive, but leaves me with more questions than answers:

- Initial opening must continue to be be 'slow' (comparatively) as the whole file must be downloaded(?).

- How are libraries handled? Can the 'core' libraries be loaded locally to avoid extra network (internet) traffic?

Good questions - I guess we have to wait until AC ships and the NDA is removed to find out. If you only had to download the full model + library once it could be OK (depending i guess on your connection)

rwallis wrote:
- Most important: Now GS has encouraged the use of net licenses in large offices, do we all need to go back to individual usb dongles to work remotely on a TW2 project - or is there more to come from GS about how licenses are handled? (A la revit electronic keys that can be emailed etc?).

It is no problem to set up sharing of a Net License key server over the internet via a VPN for example. This can be a bit flaky sometimes which i put down to the frequency with which AC checks for a valid license. It would be nice if GS did something about this but it is still a very workable solution.

[Edit]: OK people are quick this morning - a page of replies already while im typing (slowly). So this CodeMeter thing sounds fine but really unless people need to be working offline (where is that these days) what is the advantage over the current Net License system? Setting up a VPN really is easy and gives the license owner (network admin) control over those 'offsite' licenses if they really need to. It is also dynamic so licenses are released as needed, whereas this CodeMeter system sounds like that license is reserved until it is physically returned to the office (excluding the expiration date)?

[owen]

rwallis wrote:
also amused to see (yet again) Australian projects feature in the marketing, and yet GS Australia have nothing about 13 on their website! No marketing emails to the local user base. Nothing. maybe there is no one there....? Oh well maybe the one receiving our subscription money...😉

c'mon ... surely nothing surprises anymore when i comes to GS Aust?

[Laszlo Nagy]

rwallis wrote:
The news that little bandwidth is needed to interact with a TW2 server when accessed over the internet may sound impressive, but leaves me with more questions than answers:

- Initial opening must continue to be be 'slow' (comparatively) as the whole file must be downloaded(?).

- How are libraries handled? Can the 'core' libraries be loaded locally to avoid extra network (internet) traffic?

- Most important: Now GS has encouraged the use of net licenses in large offices, do we all need to go back to individual usb dongles to work remotely on a TW2 project - or is there more to come from GS about how licenses are handled? (A la revit electronic keys that can be emailed etc?).

Initially when you share the project, the project and all libraries loaded with the Project are uploaded to the server. So this is one time where large amount of data may need to be transferred over the network.
Then when each user Joins the Project, he/she needs to download the whole Project File and Libraries.
Of course if someone Leaves the Project (new terminology for Sign Out) then the next time he/she Joins again the data has to be downloaded again from the server. Besides that all network traffic is probably in the range of kilobytes, not megabytes.

There will be Local Libraries and BIM Server Libraries. Only BIM Server Libraries are loaded from the BIM Server when you Join the Project.
It is also possible now to embed Objects into the Project so you do not have to load a Project-specific Library, you can just embed all Objects used only in that Project into the Project file.

[owen]

laszlonagy wrote:
Of course if someone Leaves the Project (new terminology for Sign Out) then the next time he/she Joins again the data has to be downloaded again from the server. Besides that all network traffic is probably in the range of kilobytes, not megabytes.

All sounds reasonable .. and who says you ever need to sign out? Reserve some sort of dummy workspace and just make sure you Update regularly so you never have to download the whole file again.

Will be very interesting to see this in practice with files in the 100's of MB - something that was just not possible until now.