Getting Started with CUBE CONNECT Edition (CE)


Welcome to CUBE’s new release, CUBE CONNECT Edition (v6.5)!

This post guides you on how to get started with CUBE CE. All relevant details on the new release are provided here.

Starting CUBE CE, CUBE products are activated or accessed via a Bentley login entered in Bentley’s CONNECTION Client. Each user is intended to have a unique login matching an email address (your work emails). These logins are associated to an organization-wide account or hierarchy. Contracts associated to the hierarchy provide product licenses or entitlements to users. Administrators can optionally restrict specific logins or groups of logins (known as Entitlement Groups) to a subset of products as needed. Each organization needs to follow these steps to get started with CUBE CE.

Step 1:  Sign a SELECT agreement with Bentley
Every organization needs to sign a SELECT Agreement with Bentley to access CUBE software. Please contact your respective CUBE representative or support staff for further information. It is possible that your organization are using other Bentley products and may already have a SELECT agreement in place. Please check internally within your organization on this. Once the SELECT agreement is signed, please move to Step 2.

Step 2:  Setup a CONNECT account
Before users can access CUBE CE, they must have a Bentley account by creating a profile in Bentley’s CONNECT Center at https://connect.bentley.com. Each organization’s License Administrator or Co-Administrator will need to add users if they are not added already to their organization account. License Administrators can log onto the CONNECT Center, go to User Management console and add users one-by-one or in bulk using a .CSV file. License Administrators can set an Auto-approval option if users from the same organization with same domain register themselves. Follow the instructions on this link if you are an Administrator or a User for more details on how to set up a Bentley profile and detailed instructions on how to add users or get added. Administrators need to look at the ‘What Administrators Need to know’ and Users need to look at the – ‘What your Users Need to do’. When you have a Bentley profile, please move to Step 3.

Step 3:  Get Entitlement for CUBE products and setup Software License
After your Bentley Account is set up, Administrators or Co-Administrators can assign product Entitlements (CUBE licenses) to each of the organization users via CONNECT Center. License Administrators and Co-Administrators can set this in the Entitlement Management section. Detailed information on Entitlement Management can be found here. Users can check CUBE entitlements on their login via Bentley Licensing Tool. If product Entitlements are missing or denied, contact your License Administrator (check here how to find out who your license administrator is). The critical feature License Administrator and co-Administrator should consider setting up is the Licensing Alert System which warns the users before they exceed Administrator-defined number of licenses being used simultaneously. If more licenses are used than alloted entitlements, it may result in additional license cost. Detailed information on License Alerts can be found here.

Step 4:  Installation of Bentley’s CONNECTION Client
The CONNECTION Client is your gateway to Bentley's licensing, cloud services, portals and analytics. By signing into the CONNECTION Client, you can: find your company's projects, track your time, explore analytics, download software updates, receive relevant notifications, and access other features available to you as a Bentley user. Signing into the CONNECTION Client is a prerequisite to run CUBE CE. You can download the CONNECTION Client from ‘Software Downloads’ accessible via CONNECT Center (if you have the download rights). Administrators have three different ways of installing:

When CONNECTION Client is installed, sign-in with your Bentley Account profile and open ‘Bentley Licensing Tool’ which is installed with the CONNECTION Client.

Step 5: Installing CUBE CE
All Bentley software inlcuding CUBE CE can be downloaded from the CONNECT Center or via the CONNECTION client. Inside CONNECT Center, browse to 'Software Downloads' from the left menu or under 'My Services'. Select CUBE in the Brand list and click Apply. Click on the 'Get Software' link to the download page and click 'Download'

  

If you get an "Access Denied" error, as below, you need to contact your administrator, since only he/she can give you access to download the software (and also licensing entitlements).

Step 6: Check status of CUBE licenses
The Bentley Licensing Tool provides information on license entitlements and product status for all Bentley applications, including CUBE CE. The Bentley Licensing Tool is installed with the installation of CONNECTION Client. When Bentley Licensing Tool is first opened (see below), it displays three tabs: Entitlement, Checkout License and Product Status. Please refer to the Bentley Licensing Tool section for detailed information.

 

Step 7:  Activate CUBE licenses and run
When the CONNECTION Client is installed and signed-in, you are ready to run/activate CUBE CE. There are three ways to activate CUBE products:

Activate via Product Use or Run CUBE CE
Run CUBE CE for first time and CONNECTION Client will check with the license server to determine if it has access to CUBE products. If you have product entitlement, CUBE CE will run. You can check the status under Entitlement Tab of Bentley Licensing Tool and look at ‘Access’ column. All products with ‘Allowed’ status will now run.

Activate via Activation Wizard (for users who are not aware of their product entitlements)
This step is helpful for users who are not sure of their CUBE product entitlements. Through this wizard, users can add any Bentley application or products and check if their administrator has assigned the entitlement to the respective user. The status can be checked as below. If the status is ‘Allowed’, the user can use the product. If the access is ‘Denied’, users need to contact their License Administrator or Co-Administrators for access. Detailed instructions here.

Activate via Internet for offline machines
First, License Administrator needs to checkout a license from their organization via the CONNECT Center and export a *.belic file. Details on checking out licenses are here. When licenses are checked out, the *.belic files need to be copied/transferred to the offline machine. On the offline machine, user needs to install CONNECTION Client first and then open Bentley Licensing Tool. Next, go to File menu and import the file(s). Detailed instructions on how to import files are here.