Anyone have experence installing Vectorworks on a guest account?

[jake_vossen]

We recently got a ticket to install vectorworks on a bunch of managed iMacs. The iMacs are in a video lab, where the only account the student's can use is the guest account. This is causing issues with the license not sticking when the user logs in and out. Has anyone come up with a way to install vectorworks and license it for the guest account? I know Apple is fading out login scripts, but would they work for this?

From what I have heard, here are the places a license file needs to be:

'HD > Library > Preferences' “net.nemetschek.vectorworks20XX.plist” 'HD > Users > (User's Home Folder) > Library > Preferences' "net.nemetschek.vectorworks.license.20XX.plist" “net.nemetschek.vectorworks20XX.plist” There is a 2018 folder in 'HD > Users > (User's Home Folder) > Library > Application Support > Vectorworks'

Has anyone done anything like this? Thanks in advance.

[A_A]

Well, working on an installation with mobile users.
Also tricky to get that running.

When I install it as admin, it works.

When I login as user, it asks again for an registration.

Tried to snapshot that input for the registration, but did not work sadly.

Also tried those folders you mention, but no succes either.

Any one?

[Joseph_Morris]

I know this is an old topic, but I just managed to get this working finally without modifying a user template folder.

I installed Vectorworks 2022 and captured the installation via Composer

I did manually set the preferences the first time and connected it to my licensing server.

Once I captured the plist files, I converted the keys to json and uploaded both net.nemetschek.vectorworks.2022.plist and net.nemetschek.vectorworks.plist json payloads as separate config profiles and applied them at the user level.

This sets the plists for any user logging in and automatically will license the software and register it.

[Joseph_Morris]

In addition I also specified in my user account that the Vectorworks "User Environment" was to be located in /Users/Shared/Vectorworks/ so it was a globally accessible folder. This ensures that when you push to a lab machine, all users receive the same environment and libraries.

[RCS]

Hi Joseph, you don't happen to have a step by step guide for doing this do you?
We are about to roll out 2023 to new machines and want to do it right 1st time.

I always seem to have to do some sort of manual intervention on the lab machines...which is VERY annoying :-) 

Kind regards

Gerard

[Joseph_Morris]

Step by step:

1. Package Vectorworks without launching using Composer
2. Generate a .json using the Managed App Schema Builder tool found here: Managed App Schema Builder on GitHub 
   1. You will need to enter the domain (net.nemetschek.vectorworks.2023) in the app
   2. Each of the below keys and value types will need to be created and saved in the JSON.
3. I use the following keys
   1. NNA License (array) -- value will be your serial number.
   2. NNA First Time Run (integer) -- value will be 0.
   3. Executable Path (string) -- value will be application path e.g. /Applications/Vectorworks 2023/Vectoroworks 2023.app
   4. Location (string) -- value of /Applications/Vectoworks 2023/
   5. NNA MigrationManager: VWLaunchedBefore (boolean) -- value of True.
   6. NNA User Folder (string) -- I use /Users/Shared/Vectorworks/ which was configured during previous RLM licensing. Allows for shared settings in a lab environment.
   7. NNA Template (string) -- leave blank.
4. Save the JSON from the Managed App Schema Builder
5. Upload into JAMF using Applications & Custom Settings > External Applications. Values should read correctly.

Example of JSON upload

Once the profile is configured correctly in JAMF you can distribute per-user to lab computers. Make sure that the user it applies does not already exist on the machine. You will need to remove the user account and ensure the user folder does not exist as I have experienced issues with users who exist prior to the installation of the profile. Once the profile is applied, you should then be able to launch Vectorworks and have it read the license information without issues.

There is a trick to using the Managed App Schema Builder and if your values don't appear in JAMF similar to the picture above, you may need to double-check the Schema Builder and verify that they keys/types are set correctly.

Let me know if that helps!

-- Joseph Morris