Guide to Setting up Vectorworks Project Sharing Server on Command-Line Ubuntu Linux

[Rusettsten]

Hello! I thought I would give the community a tutorial on how to install the Vectorworks Project Sharing Server on a command-line linux machine like mine. I couldn't find any tutorials or guides online as of yet. It took me 4 hours (on/off) to figure out how to successfully install and run the server.

 

For reference, I run a Dell Poweredge 710 with a 100Mbit Ethernet connection, 24GB RAM, and two mid-grade Intel Xeon processors. I run lots of stuff on this server, and this addition fit right in without any major performance impacts.

 

TO START:

 

You'll need to download the Vectorworks 2021 Installer - yes, the 2.5GB one. Download that and when you unzip it, go into the folder "ProjectSharing" and extract the file "ProjectSharingServerInstaller-566547-docker-image-186.zip". Inside that .zip file you'll find a file named "project-sharing-server.tar". Put the .tar file onto your server. I used FileZilla (FTP) to do this, and I just simply put the zip file in my user folder.

 

NEXT, you'll need to update/upgrade your Ubuntu to the latest version, and install Docker for Ubuntu. Docker has a great guide for doing this- available here.

Navigate to your user folder and get ready to issue some sudo commands. You will need sudo access on your machine to continue.

 

 

COMMANDS YOU'LL NEED TO ENTER (and what they do / why):

commands will be in italic.

 

To start, we'll need to load the .tar file into docker.

sudo docker load -i project-sharing-server.tar

 

Once we have the image loaded, make sure it's there by listing what's available:

sudo docker image ls

You'll see a message like the following (yes, I installed it today, but the build must've been 4 weeks ago):

 

Create a folder for your project files in your home folder.

(Run the command cd if you want to make sure you're in the home folder.)

cd mkdir vwProjects

 

Now we'll create a container for the server. Notice any flags with more than one character use two hyphens.

sudo docker create -p 22001:22001 --mount type=bind,source="$(pwd)"/vwProjects,target=/usr/psserverd/Projects --restart always -v local --name psserverd project-sharing-server

A long hex-code will appear after you execute this command.

 

 

Finally- we get to run the server!

sudo docker container start psserverd

This will run the server, with automatic restart, on port 22001. 22001 is the default port for the Project Sharing Server.

 

 

Now I'm not an expert AT ALL with docker or with home servers, but this did seem to get the job done. You may need to port-forward your server to make it available to the Internet, but it should automatically be available to your Local Area Network.

 

Please feel free to correct me as needed.

Edited November 9, 2020 by Rusettsten

[Rusettsten]

EDIT TO MAIN POST:

 

Fixed an error where the power went out and it deleted the files on the server. Files will now save to /vwProjects in your home folder.