As detailed in a previous post providing an overview of Rhino3D cloud zoo licensing for plugins, McNeel provides an easy-to-uptake way to handle licensing for Rhino plugins in a way that is consistent with the Rhino3D user experience.
During development, there’s a convenient break point after the plugin itself supports the appropriate Rhino Cloud Zoo API calls but before fully implementing and testing the server-based HTTPS Cloud Zoo endpoints.
It’s possible to test the Cloud Zoo part of the plugin licensing at this point:
- Write a script to grant a license on the McNeel servers using the Cloud Zoo Plugin Put License https end point. Curl is a convenient tool for this for either Windows or Mac.
- Use the Rhino3d website to create a user group which will then be owned by your user account.
- Execute that script to create an instance of a license on the Rhino servers for your plugin with some number of allowed users and assign it to the group you just created. Get the ID of the group from the url when you are viewing the group in the Rhino website UI.
- At this point, you can start Rhino and install your plugin. Upon load, Rhino will call the Cloud Zoo servers and, connectivity permitting, authorize your use of the plugin.
- You may also add other users to the group. This is how the WIP/beta testing for my own XRay plugin is being prepared.
With the plugin and Cloud Zoo server licensing tested, it will be easier to test the Cloud Zoo https endpoints on the plugin vendor’s server. It would even be possible to completely skip implementing the https endpoints in a setting such as plugin development for a specific private group or team.
I recommend creating a separate Rhino3D account which is used only for managing user groups. This allows a dev to keep licenses on the personal account and manage groups plus test with the separate account, including removing the dev from the group when testing individual licensing using the dev account.
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