Advanced Topics

Finding the Zoo

When Rhino 5 needs a license from a Zoo 5 server, it determines the name of the Zoo 5 server by looking in the following locations in order:

  1. Looks in the Current User hive of the Windows Registry for the host name or IP address of your Zoo server.
  2. Looks in the Local Machine hive of the Windows Registry for the host name or IP address of your Zoo server.
  3. Queries your Domain Name System (DNS) server for the default Zoo server name.

Registry Key - Current User

When searching in HKEY_CURRENT_USER, of the Windows Registry, for the host name or IP address of your Zoo server, both Rhino 5 32-bit and Rhino 5 64-bit will look in this location:

Hive:  HKEY_CURRENT_USER

Key:   Software\McNeel\Rhinoceros\5.0\License Manager

Name:  Server

Type:  REG_SZ

Value: <host name or IP address>

Registry Key - Local Machine

If you are using a 32-bit version of Windows, then when searching in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, of the Windows Registry, for the host name or IP address of your Zoo server, Rhino 5 32-bit will look in this location:

Hive:  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE

Key:   Software\McNeel\Rhinoceros\5.0\License Manager

Name:  Server

Type:  REG_SZ

Value: <host name or IP address>

If you are using a 64-bit version of Windows, then when searching in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, of the Windows Registry, for the host name or IP address of your Zoo server, both Rhino 5 32-bit and Rhino 5 64-bit will look in this location:

Hive:  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE

Key:   SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\McNeel\Rhinoceros\5.0\License Manager

Name:  Server

Type:  REG_SZ

Value: <host name or IP address>

DNS

If a host name or IP address is not found in the above locations, then the license manager will query the system's default DNS server using the default Zoo server host name.

The default Zoo server host name is:

__mcneel.__zoo5.<your second-level domain>

For example, of your organization's second-level domain name is mycorp.com, then Rhino's license manager will query the system's default DNS server for a host named __mcneel.__zoo5.mycorp.com.

To make it easier to deploy Rhino and Rhino-based products on your network, you might consider adding a CNAME, or Canonical Name, record to your organization's DNS server. A CNAME record specifies that the domain name is an alias of another, canonical domain name.

Moving the Zoo

Moving the Zoo license manager software from one server to another is really no different than installing the Zoo software from scratch.

Note, there is no way to “move” or “copy” McNeel product CD-Keys from one Zoo server to another. Product CD-Keys must be added to the new Zoo server just as you did with your original Zoo server.