Hello everyone,
I'm asked directly Bentley for this question and they told me to ask the community because they don't know the answer O_O
I have some user that want to view Microstation files (DGN). I'm looking for an offline viewer that can be installed through SCCM. Is there such a thing? All I can find is Bentley View, that is huge, require online licence, is an online download/install and can't be package properly.
Thank you
Hi Danielle,
Let's discuss how Bentley View could work, and if it cannot, to help me better understand why. Bentley View is an "offline" product in that it doesn't require an internet connection to run from hour to hour, needing to connect only once per 7 days. If you need to put it on a box that is permanently air-gapped from the the internet, then you can check out a license (which although it then doesn't pool, who cares since it is free anyway) and this will stop it from requiring to be signed in. As for installing it via SCCM, this also works with the preliminary step of creating a deployment image. What are the showstoppers with this from your side?
The large size, however, is not going to change because Bentley View is basically all of MicroStation that runs in read-only mode. Please consider it the trade-off for having such a deeply capable viewer.
Regards,
|\/| /\ |< /\ |
Makai SmithDirector, MicroStation Product ManagementBentley Systems, Inc.
Makai Smith said:Bentley View is an "offline" product in that it doesn't require an internet connection to run from hour to hour, needing to connect only once per 7 days.
It means Bentley View is not offline product. In my opinion a general expectation and understanding is that when something is "offline", it does not require any connection at all ... never. An exception can be an installation process.
With regards,
Jan
Bentley Accredited Developer: iTwin Platform - AssociateLabyrinth Technology | dev.notes() | cad.point
Hello,
Right now, the installer is an online installer. It's a 2 mb download and when I launch it, it download everything while installing. That's my first show stopper, I don't want that, I want a full offline.
2nd, when I launch the product, it requested a cloud licence to start the product. Let it be free or not, I don't want that, I don't want to create/manage 20 000 users account that move nearly every day.
All I need is the ability to view DGN file. I'm open to any other product, as long as I can push the installation offline without any internet access requirement. A simply viewer like any other viewer in this world that require nothing else then having it installed on it.
And yes, as Jan said, an offline product is a product that never required any online connection for anything, let it be installation, configuration, activation, etc.
There is also the Bentley DGN/iModel1.0 previewer that was available, I can find it on the downloads any longer but it may be there. This installs into windows and allows Windows Explorer to show DGN's in the preview window. It has several limitations (no reference file support, or configuration) but it may help if all you need to do is see the DGN file.
~HTH
John.
yep
Danielle Gascon said:Right now, the installer is an online installer.
That's default mode only (and it's not exceptional, I know plenty of software that work this way).
Using /layout switch you can create (as Bentley called it) deployment image that contains everything and is completely offline.
Danielle Gascon said:it requested a cloud licence to start the product.
It's how Bentley designed the product and I guess there is no solution.
But when talking about such huge amount of users, I think somebody from Bentley should provide some best practice or solution, because I agree to manage thousands of users is quite impossible. Maybe it's fine for Bentley View to use alwyas the same "view user"?