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  • Silent Installation of Vectorworks 2018 - 2021


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    NOTE: This article is intended for IT professionals with an understanding of the command line/terminal interface. 

    This article is not intended for all users and is not a required procedure for installing Vectorworks in a standard work environment. 

    Do not use these steps unless you are specifically attempting to initiate a silent install of Vectorworks in a network environment or are specifically instructed to do so by Vectorworks Technical Support.

     

    The Vectorworks installer provides a command line interface for either pre-populating options or driving a silent installation from the command line.

     

    When doing a silent installation, there are six required arguments:

     

      --mode
      --unattendedmodeui
    --UserName      

      --CompName      

      --Serial      

      --installdir      


    These arguments are case sensitive and are preceded by a double dash (--).

     

    Options:

     

    --help
    Displays a list of valid options

     

    --mode

    qt
    win32
    unattended

    Installation Mode

     

    --unattendedmodeui

    none
    minimal
    minimal/WithDialogs 

    Controls the UI for Unattended mode

     

    --Serial

    Serial Number

     

    --UserName

    Username

     

    --CompName

    Company Name

     

    --installdir

    Install Directory

     

    The silent install has changed slightly from previous versions to 2018.

     

    Windows:

    You now need to uncompress the install executable manually into a folder before running the silent installer.  The executable file you need to start the silent installer will be in this location:

     

    \Vectorworks 20XX Installer\resources\installer\

     

    named “Install Vectorworks2018.exe”. Open a command prompt window as an administrator and use the following command:

     

    \Vectorworks 2018 Installer\resources\installer\"install Vectorworks2018.exe" --unattendedmodeui none --Serial EDXUSA-XXXXXX-XXXXXX-XXXXXX --UserName <user name goes here> --CompName <company name goes here> --installdir <install directory goes here> --mode unattended

     

     

    The installer will immediately return control to the command line.  This is normal.  The installer will continue installing in the background into your destination.  You can verify if it is complete by examining the file InstallerLog.txt (or UpdaterLog.txt) to see if it says "Installation completed" at the end of the log. This file can be found in the installation directory.

     

    The instructions are identical for an updater, aside from modifying them for differing filenames (UpdateVectorworks.exe, for instance)

     

    Mac: 

    You will need to first launch the installer .dmg file, which will open a volume called “Vectorworks 2018 Installer” in your finder. 

    From the Mac Terminal, type in the following command:

     

    sudo /Volumes/Vectorworks\ 2018\ Installer/Vectorworks\ 2018\ Installer.app/Contents/Resources/installer/Install\ Vectorworks2018.app/Contents/MacOS/installbuilder.sh --unattendedmodeui none --mode unattended --Serial EDMUSA-XXXXXX-XXXXXX-XXXXXX --UserName <name goes here> --CompName <computer name goes here> --installdir <install directory goes here>

     

     

    When the installation is finished, control will return to Terminal.app. You can verify if it is complete by examining the file InstallerLog.txt (or UpdaterLog.txt) to see if it says "Installation completed" at the end of the log. This file can be found in the installation directory.

     

    The instructions are identical for an updater prior to 2019 (For 2019 and later, see THIS ARTICLE), aside from modifying them for differing filenames (UpdateVectorworks.app, for instance)

     

    Note:  When replacing the user name, company name, and install directory, do not include the “<” or “>” characters.”

     

     

     

    • Like 1


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    User Feedback


    It did not work with VW2019 for me, but this path is the correct one:

     

    /Volumes/Vectorworks\ 2019/Vectorworks\ 2019\ installieren.app/Contents/Resources/installer/Install\ Vectorworks2019.app/Contents/MacOS/installbuilder.sh

     

    Makes it:

     

    sudo /Volumes/Vectorworks\ 2019/Vectorworks\ 2019\ installieren.app/Contents/Resources/installer/Install\ Vectorworks2019.app/Contents/MacOS/installbuilder.sh --unattendedmodeui none --mode unattended --Serial EDMUSA-XXXXXX-XXXXXX-XXXXXX --UserName <name goes here> --CompName <computer name goes here> --installdir <install directory goes here>

     

    Link to comment

    For Vectorworks 2022, the process has changed:

     

    1) The UserName and CompName arguments are no longer supported.

    2) The installdir argument is no longer required.

    3) For Windows, you no longer uncompress the install executable, but a ~4GB file called "dist" that has no file extension. I used 7-Zip to do this.

    Link to comment

    We are installing Vectorworks 2022 on our Macs and while we're able to install it, we are unable to attach the serial number using the "--Serial" in the command.

    Any help would be appreciated.

    Link to comment

    First, thanks for your reply!

    Yes, we've followed the format: 

    sudo /Volumes/Vectorworks2022-SP5-664120-SeriesBEG-installer1-osx/Vectorworks\ 2022\ Installer.app/Contents/Resources/installer/Install\ Vectorworks2022.app/Contents/MacOS/installbuilder.sh --unattendedmodeui none --mode unattended --Serial EHXXXX-XXXXXX-XXXXXX-XXXXXX --installdir /Applications/Vectorworks\ 2022/

     

    We originally didn't have the --installdir, but we added it just in case with no success.

    We also did "--serial XXX" instead of "--Serial XXX" with no success.

     

    When Vectorworks starts, we can see there's no serial attached in the startup screen. Afterwards, we are asked to provide a license.

     

    Our test environment does't have any previous version of vectorworks installed and in addition to running the uninstaller, we also remove any cached vectorworks folders lingering around between trials.

     

    Is there anything that needs to be done with the license description file?

     

    Again, thank you for any tips you can provide.

     

    Also - Sorry for posting this in the wrong forum and not in the 2022 forum.

     

    VectorworksStarup.png

    NoSerial.png

    Edited by savitek
    Added to apologize for posting in wrong forum
    Link to comment

    Hello,

    Wanted to update and say the silent install is for the type of licensing that we don't have. That said, these articles have been extremely helpful as we can deploy Vectorworks to all the staff with the only manual task being entering the specific license numbers.

    Thanks!

    Link to comment


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