Prerequisites for Tekla Model Sharing
Before you can start using Tekla Model Sharing and share your models, the following prerequisites must be met.
To start using Tekla Model Sharing, you need to have:
-
Tekla Structures installed.
The users of the same shared model must have the same Tekla Structures version, and use the same latest service pack.
-
A personal Trimble Identity that is connected to an organization.
All sharing actions require authentication, and the authentication is done with Trimble Identity username and password.
If you do not have a Trimble Identity, see Create your Trimble Identity for Tekla products.
-
An internet connection to share and download changes.
You must establish a connection to the Tekla Model Sharing service to perform any model sharing actions. TCP port 443 (the default HTTPS) outbound must be open, and if an HTTP proxy is used, it must support HTTP 1.1.
For further information, see TCP ports, URLs and IP ranges used by Tekla Model Sharing.
-
A valid Tekla Model Sharing subscription.
The organization's administrator assigns and manages the subscriptions in the Tekla Online Admin Tool. For more information, see Manage Tekla Model Sharing licenses.
Tekla Model Sharing licenses
The organization's administrator assigns and manages the subscription licenses in the Tekla Online Admin Tool. To obtain a Tekla Model Sharing license, contact your organization's administrator.
For more information about Tekla Model Sharing licenses, see About Tekla Model Sharing licenses.
For details about managing model sharing licenses as an administrator, see Manage subscriptions for Tekla products.
Tekla Model Sharing sharing service
When you start to share a model using Tekla Model Sharing, the model is connected to the cloud-based sharing service.
-
To send model changes to the sharing service, you write out.
-
To fetch other users' model changes from the sharing service, you read in.
When you read in other users' changes, the updates to your local version of the shared model are delivered to you as incremental packets. This means that when you read in, the data that is fetched from the sharing service is merged with the data on your computer. You must read in all shared changes before you can write out your own changes to the sharing service.
Note that there is no central model in the sharing service as such, only a model instance that consists of a model baseline and incremental updates. You cannot open the model in the sharing service or access any files.
The image below shows how the model data is stored to the sharing service. Each user fetches the model data from the sharing service to their local versions of the model when they read in. User authentication is based on Trimble Identity.
Tekla Model Sharing Cache service
You can install a separate Tekla Model Sharing Cache service that downloads and caches the model changes on behalf of the Tekla Structures client workstations. Using the cache service for Tekla Model Sharing makes downloading model data faster when the same data is requested more than once, such as when several users in the same office are working in a shared model. The cache service is especially helpful in locations where download speed might be limited.
The cache service downloads model data from the Tekla Model Sharing service and caches the data in the file system in a local area network (LAN). The first time that a user fetches a packet, it is stored in the cache service. Any later requests for the same packet are served from the cache service in the LAN. The cache is not used for packets that are written out.
The cache service is useful even if there is only one Tekla Model Sharing user in the same office. For example, rejoining a model is faster because the model data is available locally in the cache service. Also, because the model data is always loaded in small data blocks, the cache service can download any missing blocks later if the download is interrupted.
The cache server installation file can be downloaded from Tekla Downloads.