SketchUp Cloud-Based Network License Server Console?

I have already contacted Sketchup support, and received the following:


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“Thanks for your note. Currently, there is not a way to control access to individual seats of a license, disable the license checkout function, see who is using the seats, or how many seats are in use. We recognize the need for more admin controls. We appreciate your feedback and hope to integrate more features and functionality to our licensing system in the futureThere is a post on our SketchUp Community Forum that you might be interested in reading and contributing to: License management - #2 by SketchUpTeam

When will this capability be available to us admins?

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I know that I am simply adding to the noise in this thread, but I wanted to add yet another voice to the request for network license management. I voiced my concern back during the transition to web-based licensing and it seems that no (public) progress on this front has been made as of yet. Even if the ability to view usage was limited to admins via web portal, having SOME form of on-demand license auditing would be of great use. If you wanted to do something above and beyond, include license use tracking to review their use over time. However, basic current usage is by far the most important and remains a HUGE need. Thank you.

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I’ve just renewed out license due to our Subject in ITS needs this software for their curriculum.

Working in a school the only way onto the Internet is via the Proxy server, and it looks like your software doesn’t obey that AT ALL.

Despite the Ports opened, and the URL’s whitelisted and Authentication needed for it turned off, the software just refuses to work.

Unless we have some other option to license whether it local, or your software at least TRIES to use the Proxy instead of thinking hey, I have a Direct Connection to the Internet, then this software will have to be ditched, regardless to how easy or quick it works for the classes in our school.

Holy cow, there is still no way to identify who has a license open? Our annual maintenance price went up significantly this year and for that we still get nothing on the admin side? Unreal.

can you post your verbose question in an own thread.

I’ll add my voice to the list. This should be a priority for Sketchup Pro. I work for a fairly large size AE firm and It’s amazing that I still have no way of knowing who’s using our licenses and what our peak usage hours are. It’s been long enough, resolve this already.

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Just had one of my architects send out an all-employee email asking anyone on SketchUp to exit and free up a license. I have no way to tell my architects who is using a license or licenses, nor who has checked out/borrowed a license. It almost seems like a way to gain revenue - “if you’re running out of licenses, just buy more licenses!” As previously mentioned, it is now nearly 18 months since this request was made and Trimble has all but ignored it, and other software companies have figured out how to do this. Please throw us a bone - at the very least give us details on exactly how a computer contacts a SketchUp server to obtain a license! I could at least try to set up a Wireshark capture session and look out for specific traffic.

This may help some who can afford to spend money, thought I may as well pass it on as it doesn’t appear we’re getting any help from the Sketchup team.

We use a piece of software called KeyConfigure by Sassafras software, originally bought to stop us overusing our Bentley licences and successfully prove to Bentley that we hadn’t overused when the inevitable bill came.

You can set it up to monitor and control who is opening specific software on your network. I am currently using it to see who is using Sketchup and can look back at historic use. It’s helped on a couple of points, a lot of our users appear to open Sketchup on 2 machines, one to render and one to work in, which uses up 2 licences. The second point is I can see users who are resorting to leaving their machines on overnight with Sketchup open in order to ensure they have a licence the next day.

It has been really helpful in understanding that we don’t have enough licences and exactly how many more we would need. Just a shame we had to buy this 3rd party software in order to find out that information.

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Of course if someone opens SketchUp from outside your network with your serial and auth. codes you won’t see that.

Anssi

That’s very true but the fact I can see all the licences we own, in use, inside our network, I can be pretty confident that is not happening. Obviously this only occurs when we are maxed out on licences but this is a daily occurrence for us.

As I said this is not the answer, we didn’t buy this for monitoring Sketchup licences.
If Trimble could do this for us, it would certainly be much better.

1½ years later… don’t call it patience, call it Godot :kissing_smiling_eyes:

users are demanding for it, can a Trimble representative provide some vague information if and roughly when this will be realized.

Vaguely and roughly, I can say that we’ve been actively pursuing a method for measuring and reporting on network license usage. I can confidently say that no one is happy with the amount of time that it has taken so far. But those who are involved have never stopped working hard or deprioritized the work in favor of lower priority tasks. The progress has encountered many unanticipated setbacks which range from available engineering resources, to working directly with RLM (the license technology) on feature requests that we need, to recursive complexities (eg. solving problem X reveals a new problem Y).

We never can and never will publicly post when or if any particular feature will be released. It’s one of the joys of being a publicly traded company. But this project is getting the attention it needs, and we know that it couldn’t be released soon enough.

Thanks for sharing this insight, @OrmsIT. With the old licensing technology (i.e. SketchUp 2014 and older) Sassafras was a common solution for schools or other educational institutions, which worked as a “key server.” It’s interesting to hear that you found a way to use it with the RLM-based versions of SketchUp Pro. We’ll take a look at the reporting capabilities and see if there’s something there that we can learn from.

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So, here’s the deal… working at an Architecture Firm with over 100 SketchUp users (luckily not at the same time) - I am in a position where I need to know who is using SketchUp and if/when we will run out of Network licenses. As a programmer, I decided enough is enough… I’ve waited over a year for Trimble to get this figured out… now I am giving it away to anyone interested.

Below is a Ruby Script that you can place in all of your users SketchUp\Plugins folder and it will write to a text file every time they open/close SketchUp. This is a bit of a messy text file but I am able to look at it quickly and see who is currently in SketchUp and do a count of licenses. Just save this to a .RB file (license-check.rb) and it will automatically run in the background. Enjoy!

require ‘sketchup.rb’

dastring = ENV[‘COMPUTERNAME’]
time1 = Time.new
timeo = time1.strftime(“%H:%M:%S”)
timem = time1.strftime(“%m-%d”)
File.open(‘//CENTRAL-SERVER\Sketchup_lic_’+timem+‘.txt’, ‘a’) { |file| file.write(“#{dastring} Opened - #{timeo}\n”) }

class MyAppObserver < Sketchup::AppObserver
def onQuit()
dastring = ENV[‘COMPUTERNAME’]
time1 = Time.new
timeo = time1.strftime(“%H:%M:%S”)
timem = time1.strftime(“%m-%d”)
File.open(‘//CENTRAL-SERVER\Sketchup_lic_’+timem+‘.txt’, ‘a’) { |file| file.write(“#{dastring} Closed - #{timeo}\n”) }
end
end

Sketchup.add_observer(MyAppObserver.new)

The historical network license system created a file in the network licensing folder when an user started SketchUp, and simply deleted it when the application was closed. I am not a Ruby programmer so I wonder if your script could be altered to work the same, in order not to leave all those “log” files around.

It is a nice workaround but it won’t stop people using your licenses from anywhere on the Internet if your license details have leaked. I may be paranoid as I haven’t heard of this happening for anyone yet.

Anssi

That’s a good point… I usually just do some math and when we hit our limit in licenses, I check to see if there are any “unaccounted for” licenses.

Not sure how I would use the historical license system file as you mentioned… sounds interesting but it is gone when they close (so I don’t know how I would use that).

Someday I hope there is a cleaner easier way to do this…

In the old system you could set the license folder to List View, and by looking at the owners of the files there you could see who had SU open. The downside was that the file remained behind if SU crashed.

Anssi

Not sure why this is taking so long?

A simple list of host names currently using licenses would be a good start.
We currently use RLM for Maxwell Render licensing, and it can easily report Host names and User names of licenses being used.
And Sketchup can already tell when our licenses are exhausted (giving us the “Sorry, all licenses are in use…” message).

Seems like it’s just a matter of combing this information on the server side, and reporting back to us users/admins?

Crickets…

It’s unbelievable that they can’t provide a method to view the network licenses in use. Had to call support today to find out who was using the licenses. Support must send a message to sales and they are supposed to let us know which users have a license. Still waiting, hours later. I’m sure the goal is to add to the frustration and hope to force the purchase of more licenses.

Indeed! There is :smiley:

A Network License reporting tool exists and is accessible by our SketchUp Pro sales representatives (or if you’ve purchased from a SketchUp Pro reseller, contact that person). They can generate a report for you over a period of time that you request.