3Shape Remote Design - Can i Do it?

[Matt Drury]

In this informative blog from Whip Mix's Evan Kemper, RG, CDT, he will cover the obstacles and hurdles that you may face, and other things to consider when attempting to setup a remote CAD design station.

http://info.whipmix.com/3shape-remote-design-can-i-do-it

If you find this helpful, please feel free to subscribe to the Whip Mix Blog where we post helpful and informative articles on a weekly basis.

 

[Sevan P]

Nice article, I'm in the process of setting up a VPN router for one of our techs to have access to out local network from home. We currently are are at 75 down on Internet to speed will need to take it to 100 plus. Plus all my 3shape pc's are hardwired to the local network no wireless.

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk

 

[Matt Drury]

Nice article, I'm in the process of setting up a VPN router for one of our techs to have access to out local network from home. We currently are are at 75 down on Internet to speed will need to take it to 100 plus. Plus all my 3shape pc's are hardwired to the local network no wireless.

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk

Keep me posted on your journey into remote design! If you have any questions, or run across any obstacles that you need help with, please feel free to give Evan or I a call and we will do our best to assist!

 

[JMN]

[...] Plus all my 3shape pc's are hardwired to the local network no wireless.

Awesome sauce, enabled!

 

[sirmorty]

I used to remote in and design cases when I was using 3shape.

It's not the download speed that matters it's the upload speed.

It worked ok for singles but for more complex cases it was not really workable.

There would be lag moving sometimes and sometimes it would just freeze for about 5 seconds then let you go on with designing. It depends on how well you can tolerate that.

The main problem was being in the Dental Manager. That took for ever. Especially if you wanted to change any materials. And forget about having 2 people on the pc at the same time. That would just not work. Be prepared and back up the database. More then likely it will become corrupt and really stop working.

That was a couple years ago and maybe it has improved.

 

[deadhead]

when it comes to remoting to design, you have to make sure all computers are good enough to handle the software and that whatever source you are using to to remote from(suggest using a nice server that has atleast a 5G graphics card hooked to it)and make sure u have adequate space and speed or else u will lag and get error messages . It took us a few months to get things figured out but now we have 6 design stations remoted into one main location and things are running nicely. its nice too since our lab is all wireless, we can remote into exocad from any computer in the lab to check on a case or change a design.

 

[rookiee]

Guys, related to this! I saw 3shape is offering extra (duplicate) dongle for affordable price. is to have one at lab then after models are scanned I can turn off computer, go home and have a duplicate in home computer and design. Is this plausable or I have to much imagination? So, one at lab, trun off, use second one on different computer, so there won't be two at the time online.

 

[deadhead]

that would work too rookiee, but not sure how 3shapes dongle system works, since we use ExoCad. But with our version of exocad we put the dongle directly into our server and our IT guy re-wrote some pathing so now we can use any computer in the lab that has exocad on it and remote into the server and design a case and also could remote in from home as long as you have right IP address and your computer at home has same version of exocad, and get the right permissions to allow you to access the wiFi from the lab at your home. Then u could then work from home too. But ExoCad 2016 does not allow you to remote without getting multiple dongles

 

[Sevan P]

Guys, related to this! I saw 3shape is offering extra (duplicate) dongle for affordable price. is to have one at lab then after models are scanned I can turn off computer, go home and have a duplicate in home computer and design. Is this plausable or I have to much imagination? So, one at lab, trun off, use second one on different computer, so there won't be two at the time online.

There is a second seat option for 1250 instead of 1950 a year. But is that get put on a the same dongle it only works on the network it is plugged into. If you wanted to take it home you would have to have it put on a second dongle and they are not cheap.

You could take the dongle home from work, but if it is still needed for design or some one scan early on the morning before you get the, not a good idea.

It is the purchase of a second physical dongle that is pricey, used to be around 6k but now they have very competitive pricing. Call your reseller and have them put a quote together for you and decided from there.

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk

 

[R1C2UOK]

At Certified Dental Designs I could stay busy 24-7. It is simple, build yourself a cheap website and add a couple pieces of software to allow up and downloads.
After a year you will be so busy that you will select your clients. If you have any questions on set up or the 3shape end of it just get in touch

 

[Jussi Roivanen]

atm i am setting up vpn connection for remote design as well, thus far journey has given me some good encounters. There is more than one way to skin a cat, but every skinning.. requires a Cat. A Cat being the dongle (server). Remote design station can connect to "dongle server" over VPN. Been there, done that. That is first thing you have to achieve (if vpn is set up correctly, it is just a matter of opening proper ports from server firewall). "Sniffing" licences from the dongle server do not generate much traffic, so it will work nicely over VPN

Then there is the OTHER data traffic between remote station and server. Most of the traffic is generated by scans and designs (fetching scans, saving designs),which can be quite "heavy duty". 3shape recommends to use standard client/server model which means all executables are residing on the server. It is... simply bad. Bad, Bad, Bad. Using that means ALL executables are downloaded from server before executing, also all associated libraries and materials are downloaded from server and that generates ****load more of traffic and result is totally insane loading times. You will start "pushing up the daisies" while waiting. i can promise you that.

You can use server installation on server but hell, use custom standalone install to remote station instead and export/import materials. That is the way to get programs executed truely locally (on remote design station).

What you MIGHT want to do is to save and fetch orders list (database) and scan data to/from your server. What you need to do is share "3shape output dir" and "manufacturing" dir so that it is accessible over vpn. Nowdays windows can connect to a share via tcpip. eg. connecting to \\192.168.1.1\3shape is possible instead of using name (rg. \\myserver\3shape) Sharing properties in Windows client and VPN gateway must be set up correctly in order to get those shares to work (either by IP or by name).

The network speed issue. it really does not matter do you have gigabyte thingies inside (local network) your lab. Outside (internet) connection speeds what matters. Upstream dictates how fast the connection to server is, and how well scan/order data is transferred: you can have fibre network connecting remote computer to internet, but if upstream from lab is 10mb/s, then speed is 10mb/s. And 10mb is not enough. From experience, 50ish (we use 50mb corporate-grade 4G connection) on server side is.. something that we can live with, i would recommend 100mb/s connection.

I must say that amount traffic 3shape generates (scans, orders designs) is so heavy and startup times on dental designer is soooooooooooo slow, that even more lightweight solution should be considered: just make remote client to sniff licences from the dongle server and use LOCAL database and LOCAL HDD (in remote design station) to store orders, scans and designs: Scan things at lab, export order and transfer that to remote computer by other means than 3shape, then import orders in remote computer. When finished designing, export order, move export-file to server and import order. Or just transfer finished STL file, less traffic (and no order/scan data!).

-- jussi

 

[Jussi Roivanen]

New obervations to this thread as well. My testbed is "virtual" vpn so basically all computers are inside local network, but i just use a "fiddly" network setup so a client (windows 10 machine) can connect to VPN capable router (and router to network where server is). As far as i see Dongle Service is found in remote computer, DentalManager fetches order data from remote database server and shares (scan data) are located over VPN nicely..

There is some issues which causes that DentalDesktop does not start. DS tries to start DongleServerService but it fails with error "remote computer is not running". It is either the fact that i did not use local dongle when i installed DS.. or DentalSystem is not too happy with multiple network connections and IP-addresses which are result of client-to-site VPN (remote design station uses vpn-client to connect to router at "lab") connection. My guess is that the problem is multiple addresses.. and it might be solved with site-to-site vpn (two routers at both ends maintaining constant vpn-connection). This is something i have to investigate more.

if i dont use VPN (multiple ip addresses) and fiddly network setup (the design station connected directly to local network),everything works nicely.

 

[G&SDentalLab]

At Certified Dental Designs I could stay busy 24-7. It is simple, build yourself a cheap website and add a couple pieces of software to allow up and downloads.
After a year you will be so busy that you will select your clients. If you have any questions on set up or the 3shape end of it just get in touch

Once the site is built what does it mean when you write adding a couple pieces of software to allow up and downloads? What is being uploaded and downloaded? I speculate but I would rather ask and get the answer directly from you

 

[G&SDentalLab]

Nice article, I'm in the process of setting up a VPN router for one of our techs to have access to out local network from home. We currently are are at 75 down on Internet to speed will need to take it to 100 plus. Plus all my 3shape pc's are hardwired to the local network no wireless.

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk

What are the steps I need to take to set up the VPN network specifically

 

[Affinity]

At Certified Dental Designs I could stay busy 24-7. It is simple, build yourself a cheap website and add a couple pieces of software to allow up and downloads.
After a year you will be so busy that you will select your clients. If you have any questions on set up or the 3shape end of it just get in touch

How are people being driven to your website?

 

[G&SDentalLab]

How are people being driven to your website?

After the website is finished we will be using Facebook, Google +, Twitter, and eventually YouTube. Right now the only thing driving attention is me walking into the doctor's office with a business card and updated price list. (Digital is the future and these platforms are a must for growth and sustainability)

 

[Affinity]

I appreciate the response but I was asking the poster I quoted. I find it odd that you dont understand what is being uploaded though.. what are you trying to accomplish?

Once the site is built what does it mean when you write adding a couple pieces of software to allow up and downloads? What is being uploaded and downloaded? I speculate but I would rather ask and get the answer directly from you

 

[G&SDentalLab]

I appreciate the response but I was asking the poster I quoted. I find it odd that you dont understand what is being uploaded though.. what are you trying to accomplish?

I have no experience with running a small business website, so I have hired a close friend to get all this done and then turned over to me for maintenance and growth. I can understand putting content on the site to be downloaded and we will be using 3shape communicate so that would handle uploading intraoral scans. But what is the purpose of software on a website to enable uploading? I know you have experience and I am on a path to attain more experience, I need to get this information from a knowledgeable source like yourself. Specifically, what I am trying to accomplish is the freedom to be out of the lab doing sales and returning home in the evening to design cases that were scanned in the lab.

 

[Sevan P]

I just did it with out any VPN router or spending a single penny. Of course I don't have access to the database but software open up with everything enabked on the single. Just a simple port forwarding of the 27027 from the ip address of the 3shape server behind the router, then enter the ip address of the router in the server location on the outside pc and it connects to the dongle. But no access to the data base. This is were a VPN router i n the lab would allow the database to be shared. But since I export the work to a is stick and take it home, this works for me. Just need to make sure the outside pc has the same database as then in lab pc. Do a system clone. Take the dongle home fo r one night install the software as a standalone when asked for dongle location input the up address if the labs router intall as clone system and done. Now bit pc's have the same dme libraries. Or try it with out the dongle and when asked where the dongle is do as a bove.

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk

 

[Jussi Roivanen]

What are the steps I need to take to set up the VPN network specifically

Setting up VPN requires "computer knowledge". For VPN connection you need to set up your router properly: What you need to do and how to do it, varies (router specific thingies, reading a manual is needed!). Then you must configure client (windows machine) so that client and the router exchange keys/certificates and handles authentication as well. After that you need to open ports (from "server" machine) for 3shape (dongle) and possibly for database and filesharing (if you want to use them).

It is possible to make 3shape work without VPN like Sevan said. And Its possible to make database AND Sharing (for order dir) to work as well! I am a bit of a security freak so i must point out that VPN encrypts traffic and it can be used to authenticate users (that connect to router) as well. Without VPN all traffic is sent "as is", without encryption. But since one user only knows what router is forwarding which port, the lack authentication/encryption might not be a "real" problem :-D

If you are connecting without VPN, from windows firewall you need to open and/or forward (from router) these ports:
- 27027 for 3shape (dongle)
- 1433, 1434 for SQL server express (database that is)
- 445, 139 for file sharing (ability to connect to a preknown share with IP address, for order dir/manufactdir)

if you want to use that file sharing ability, there is a thing what you need to know before you begin to change settings in 3shape control panel. First is Sharing permissions: you can alter Sharing permissions (of that c:\3shape folder) so that user "guest" has read/write access (not recommended due lack of security/authentication) OR need to know username and password for that machine you are trying to connect: then you can use windows creditential manager (in control panel) to add/store creditentials for that machine. Second thing is that opening/forwarding ports 445 and 139 DOES NOT enable the Windows feature that you can "browser network (computers)" in windows file explorer. You will need to know what is shared and in what ip-address and connect to it directly.

If you use remote database (of which we have been warned in this thread: it slows DentalManager a lot) then you might want to check that one certain option enabled on sql server express. For 3shape installation TCP/IP protocol should be (if i remember corretly) enabled by default. Without that (server) will not allow any remote connection to database. Open "sql server configuration manager" and check from "sql server network configuration" -> "protocols for THREESHAPEDENTAL" that TCP/IP protocol is enabled.

anyway, the easiest way to do "remote designing" is the way Sevan is doing it: just to make 3shape software check the dongle over network, then use export/import orders between "remote computer" and main design/scan station.