Advanced Steel and Working From Home

Working from home has become a hot topic of late. Here at Cadgroup we have prepared some information for our Advance Steel customers on how to still be productive if you are required to work from home. From licensing through to accessing data read below.

LICENSING:

Please refer to this link for further information: SU and MU Autodesk Licensing.

CONFIGURATION:

Once you have the appropriate license for you to work from home, we need to make sure we have the right settings and configuration on your home workstation. To do this you will need to copy across the Advance Steel Settings folder one computer to the other. Follow the instructions in How to transfer all Advance Steel settings between two computers.

ACCESSING FILES AND SHARING FILES REMOTELY ON A NETWORK ENVIRONMENT:

First,  you need to set up a master model (Advance Steel 2020 only). Users must note that the workflow for the Master Model needs to be strictly followed to avoid errors. The main point being that the master model is never directly worked on. More information in  Set Up a Master Model.

Next, we need to be able to access the network location or use a cloud sharing provider.

1. Users will need access to files on the office network via VPN or Remote Access to the office network location.
2. There is also the possibility of using BIM360 if VPN is not a solution for your company. With BIM360 and Desktop Connector, you can work directly from the cloud as if from your server. It may require some changes to your regular workflow, but this alternative should be considered.
3. For certain storage providers it is recommended that the Syncing is turned off.
4. Vault is an option for users to be able to work on their projects from home environment. More information in How to manage Vault and Advance Steel Project.

There is additional information for this workflow in How to manage Vault and Advance Steel Project.

To Access Vault from home, relevant information in Advance Steel and Vault 2020.

Please note although this is an option that works for some users, other workflows may not work as expected. Autodesk stress that this workflow is not tested and validated by the Autodesk development team. Cadgroup would strongly suggest that extensive testing with your workflows be performed first before committing to using Advance Steel with Vault.

INTERNET SPEEDS:

As you can imagine, an important consideration here is the speed of the Internet. For a rough estimate on how much time is required for uploading and downloading files, here is a Calculator:

In Australia we typically have:

• ADSL 15-20 Mb/sec download to home and 1-2Mb/sec upload to office/cloud
• NBN 25/50/100 Mb/sec download and 10/20/35 upload to office/cloud

For example, a 100MB file will take 14 minutes to upload on a ADSL connection, meanwhile only 30 seconds on a NBN connection.