Publish AutoCAD to the web with Thinfinity Workspace

Introduction

AutoCAD is one of the most used programs by architects,  industrial designers and students in order to design their projects. At the same time, its license costs make it an expensive option for many educational programs. Learn how you can solve this by publishing it as a RemoteApp with Thinfinity® Remote Workspace. 

AutoCAD is a software widely used by architects, engineers, industrial designers, and students. Although there is a Web App version of AutoCAD, it does not have all the functionalities of the Desktop version. At the same time, due to its high license costs, it may be too expensive to offer it to a large number of professors and students.

This challenge -as complex as it seems- can be solved by publishing a RemoteApp with Thinfinity Workspace, our all-in-one solution for application and desktop delivery. With Thinfinity Workspace, you can publish AutoCAD to the web in just a few minutes.

What is a RemoteApp?

RemoteApp is a feature of Microsoft’s Remote Desktop Services that allows individual programs to run remotely using a Remote Desktop Client. Instead of accessing the entire remote desktop, RemoteApp allows users to see and interact with just the application as if they were running on the end-user’s device.

You don’t need to have any programming skills or make any modifications to the Windows application source code to accomplish it.

How to publish a RemoteApp with Thinfinity Remote Workspace?

Thinfinity Remote Workspace is the first integrated solution to access applications, desktops, data, from a unified portal. With Thinfinity Remote Workspace, you can enable remote access to ALL your apps, desktops, and files on any device.

Installing it for the first time is pretty simple. There are just a few items you have to take into account. You can check the Thinfinity Remote Workspace’s installation steps here.

1. Open the Thinfinity® Configuration Manager:

2. Adding a new profile

Click on the ‘Access Profiles’ tab, and press ‘Add’. For this guide, we’ll be creating an ‘RDP’ connection:

3. Configure the Access Profile 

Configure the Access Profile with a ‘Name’, then on ‘Computer’ enter the IP Address or domain name of the server, and on ‘Credentials’ enter the Windows credentials to authenticate to said server:

4. Allow Anonymous Access for the profile

For testing purposes, check the ‘Allow anonymous access’ option:

5. Configure RemoteApp

Under the ‘Program’ tab, choose the ‘Execute as RemoteApp’ option.

Then, point both the ‘Program path and the filename’ and ‘Start in the following folder’ fields to the executable’s directory and its root folder, respectively.

You can also pass arguments to your application in the “Arguments” field:

6. Allow Anonymous Access for Workspace

For testing purposes, check the ‘Allow anonymous access’ option and then apply changes.

7. Open Workspace

You can open the published application by going to http://127.0.0.1:Port and clicking on the newly created Profile

And thats all! You can now use  AutoCAD on a browser via the RemoteApp functionality for Thinfinity Workspace!

Denied Error

IMPORTANT: If you get an access denied error, please follow the next steps:

If you get an access denied error, you would need to enable a group policy to allow unlisted programs to be started. To this end, open the ‘Group Policy Editor’ by going to ‘Start > Run > gpedit.msc’:

On the ‘Group Policy Editor’ navigate to:

‘Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Remote Desktop Services > Remote Desktop Session Host > Connections > Allow users to connect remotely by using Remote Desktop Services’

Double click on this policy and then click on the check-box next to ‘Enabled’:

Afterwards, you’ll have to update the group policies. In order to do this, call ‘gpupdate /force’ from a ‘Command Prompt’ window elevated as an Administrator:

To ensure these changes are applied, you can go to ‘Start > Run > services.msc’ and restart the ‘Thinfinity Service Manager’:

Enabling high-quality performance

H264 is the most commonly used format for recording, compression, and distribution of high-quality resolution content in an efficient manner. As such, Thinfinity Workspace must work in conjunction with H264 in order to provide a professional experience. To activate H264 for Thinfinity, check this step-by-step article.

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