Solutions for drafters working at home

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

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

[Anonymous]

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!

[Anonymous]

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

[Anonymous]

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

[__archiben]

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 . . .

[Anonymous]

~/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

[TomWaltz]

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.