Situation: Sketchup Pro 2013 Educational Environment Network Lab setup.
I have been trying to deploy sketchup into 4 x computer labs at our school (120 PC’s). From what I can find there seems to be very little information on deployment, (When I say deployment I mean do something once and it works on 120 workstations after next reboot, not having to touch every PC for the installation)
So I thought I’d share what I have worked out so far. Please note that my methods are not supported in any way shape or form and I have nothing to do with sketchup and I cant guarantee it will work, so I recommend you dont do the following steps, unless you’re the sort of person like me, who is happy to try an unsupported workaround to save time.
- Download installer for 2013 pro
- Extract .msi file from above file and place in your software distribution share on your server.(NB Need to make sure .net framework 4 is installed and windows installer 3.1 or higher is installed before attempting msi deployment of sketchup) (Hint: use 7Zip)
- Create a group policy to deploy the msi file to your workstations. Computer:->Policies:->Software Setting:\Assigned Applications.
- I’m not a big fan of creating shares on servers that everyone has read/write access to, but unfortunately you have to for this software licensing to work. So I do my best to make sure that students can not easily find open shares with RW access. To do this, create a folder on your server called Sketchup and set the following advanced permissions on the folder. Remove inheritable permissions, add domain users with modify permissions, add your all students group with Deny Read & Execute, Deny List folder Contents and Deny Read. Share this folder as sketchup with everyone having read/write access on the share. Create a folder inside this folder called License. Remove inheritable permssion again, and give domain users full modify rights. Latter I’m going to hide the share also, but for now leave it visible.
- Install sketchup on one workstation, using license information from your email. Save license file into License folder created above by browsing network to your shared licence folder…
- Delete network share from the sketchup folder above and re-share as sketchup$ with everyone RW permissions. Hide the license folder that is inside the sketchup folder. (I also push out a policy that prevents students viewing hidden file and prevent them from changing setting to view hidden files)
- Modify server.dat file found in the c:\Programdata\Sketchup\Sketch2013 to reflect new hidden share name.
- Copy server.dat file to your software distribution share.
9 Modify group policy created earlier and add an update file preference. ie Computer setting:->Preference:->Files (New File) to copy the server.dat file on your software distribution share to c:\Programdata\Sketchup\Sketch2013\server.dat
10 Apply the group policy the OU that has your lab computers in it. - Wait for group policy refresh or run gpupdate /force /boot if you want it to happen straight away.
Volia, you have deployed sketchup without touching the workstations.(except if your impatient and manually ran gpupdate that is)
Now my question is how do you stop students from viewing/ changing the licence info in the Sketckup Program itself (ie Help:->Licence:-Licence Info and Help:->Licence:->Unset Network License File.
And how do you stop it from requesting to update to the latest version? Prompting for firewall exception, etc
Hope this info helps other people. I have wasted a whole day trying to deploy this software. Sorry for the typo’s
Regards
Warren