VRay for Revit - managing licenses at a larger firm

[jackbird]

I'm evaluating VRay for Revit at our large-ish firm (~100 seats of Revit) and trying to figure out how to make the licensing model work.

 

We have members of various teams who are not dedicated renderers doing internal/preliminary renders. However, those won't always be the same people. Our actual simultaneous VRfR GUI usage would probably top out at 6 or 7 seats.

 

According to our reseller, VRay for Revit:

• Pulls a license as soon as you start Revit if it is installed on that machine
  
• Must be actually uninstalled in order to not pull a license
  

 

So in order for floating licensing to work, it sounds like we will either have to coordinate and switch around who actually has VRay installed on their machine (which sounds like a nightmare), or else buy many multiples of the number of GUI licenses we actually need (which is untenable at these prices). But apparently larger firms are making it work somehow.

 

What am I missing?

[John Dollus]

I'm evaluating VRay for Revit at our large-ish firm (~100 seats of Revit) and trying to figure out how to make the licensing model work.

 

We have members of various teams who are not dedicated renderers doing internal/preliminary renders. However, those won't always be the same people. Our actual simultaneous VRfR GUI usage would probably top out at 6 or 7 seats.

 

According to our reseller, VRay for Revit:

• Pulls a license as soon as you start Revit if it is installed on that machine
  
• Must be actually uninstalled in order to not pull a license
  

 

So in order for floating licensing to work, it sounds like we will either have to coordinate and switch around who actually has VRay installed on their machine (which sounds like a nightmare), or else buy many multiples of the number of GUI licenses we actually need (which is untenable at these prices). But apparently larger firms are making it work somehow.

 

What am I missing?

 

The internal/prelim teams doing concept renderings aren't using vray. Problem solved

 

I would contact chaos group directly to verify what your reseller has told you.

In Max, you can't release/engage a GUI license without restarting Max (but uninstalling isn't necessary). i would expect Revit licensing to behave in a similar fashion. First come, first served.

[jackbird]

In max, though, you can start with alternate plugin.ini files so as not to pull a license you don't need. Does such a thing exist in Revit?

[Francisco Penaloza]

We have a similar problem with VRay for sketchup, the first person who fire up Sketchup is the one who the the VRay license.

So we have the typical calling to some one desk, ' can you close your Sketchup so I can fire up mines and get the VRay license'

A real pain. I would be really open to some alternative.

[jackbird]

Well, here's an answer from the horse's mouth, and it's better than I would have hoped for:

 

Yes, many big architectural offices requested this and last week we released version 340.02 where we added an on/off license button to make this workflow possible.

 

I don't know which V-Ray for Revit version you are using. But if you are still using 340.01, I recommend you to update it to 340.02.

What's new there is that we have added an on/off button on the V-Ray toolbar. Thus you can install V-Ray on all 100 computers and keep it turned off. Whenever you need it, you turn it on on the computer you want. After you finish working, you turn it off.

[Francisco Penaloza]

Well, here's an answer from the horse's mouth, and it's better than I would have hoped for:

 

Well they finally got it, I wonder if works the same for sketchup I'll check it out.

Thanks

[Scott Schroeder]

The internal/prelim teams doing concept renderings aren't using vray. Problem solved

 

I would contact chaos group directly to verify what your reseller has told you.

In Max, you can't release/engage a GUI license without restarting Max (but uninstalling isn't necessary). i would expect Revit licensing to behave in a similar fashion. First come, first served.

 

A bit off topic.

A restart of Max is not needed to release a GUI license. All you need to do is close the render set up dialog and you release your GUI license. Go to the Vray License Status page ("sever name" : port# (usually 30304)) and check it out in action. The material editor may act a little funny but usually closing and reopening it gets the material balls to show back up.

 

The render setup dialog is the only dialog in Max that engages/releases the GUI license. All other times you are using a network rendering license. We have 2 Vray GUI licenses for 4 people and we rarely ever step on each other's GUI license as long as no one leaves that render setup window open without reason. We have 22 network rendering licenses.

 

Edit: You do not need the space between the server name and : and the port #. However, I can't type it all together because if it put the : and port together, I get this :port.

Edited January 17, 2017 by VelvetElvis

[karambaki]

From the V-Ray tab, under the drop down of the help panel, you can click on release licence

(You need to be in the latest version of V-Ray for Revit)

 

As soon that this button is pressed, then V-Ray doesn't pull the licence, till you press it again,

 

That's it.

Good luck