While I agree that registering one time to download a version of free software from a website is not uncommon. Linking to a remote website or the checking out of time constrained licenses every time you use the software is definitely NOT common. I’ve been working in industry for 34 years, and Bentley is the ONLY company who has done this. Furthermore, this is NOT a slippery slope that should be promoted, or we’ll never get any work done. What happens if Bentley goes out of business? It is one thing to not be able to update drawings, but it is a whole other ball game not being able to view them. Over time, we would find a conversion utility that would get us the ability to edit, but we would be crippled if we couldn’t view our files. In fact, people’s lives would be at stake as electricians would be flying blind without drawings. Bentley should be embarrassed by this requirement, and it disturbs me even more that they would attempt to make people believe that this is the “norm” or even OK.
Thank you for submitting your Idea. We do require that you log in to access Bentley View as this will activate the software for use. We've done this as our standard way of accessing our software due to the deprecation of our previous way of licensing through the SELECTserver.
This is a problem for large organization. It's impossible for us to manage more than 600 users in the Bentley portal only for a viewer software.
There is no need for the Connection Client to always be running for an occasional use of Bentley View. Also, there is no need to be constantly sending data to Bentley, just for the occasional use of Bentley View.
And I should be able to turn on my laptop after two weeks of no usage and use the free Bentley View software at a client's location without an internet connection. This can't be done with the current configuration.