One of Arkio's main features is the possibility to design in real-time with up to 24 users from anywhere in the world. You can start a meeting from the meeting panel accessible via the 3-person icon. Once you are in a meeting all your created Arkio geometry and imported geometry are shared with your meeting participants so everyone is looking at the same scene and can make suggestions in real-time. All modeling operations in meetings are simultaneous, so modeling operations done by one user can be undone/redone by other editors.
When joining a meeting the following details need to be filled in:
Your Name - your name that will be displayed for other users in the meeting
Room Name - A meeting name to share with other people (needs to be at least 3 letters)
Room Password - A password to access this meeting for more login security (optional)
All users must enter an identical Name and Password to join the same meeting. (non-case sensitive)
The first user to join a meeting becomes the Meeting Host who can manage the meeting and switch between scenes. All active users in a meeting will be visible in the multi-user panel and in the scene by the corresponding color and name tag. Pro and Enterprise users will become the meeting host when entering a room that already has free users and can switch the host to other licensed users.
Free and Pro meetings
When you start a meeting as a Free user 3 other users can join you for a 20-minute meeting with 4 editors. This allows you to share models between your devices and explore Arkio with your friends to experience collaborative design. When a Plus user joins the time limit for your meeting is removed and you can edit with up to 4 editors in that meeting.
If you join a meeting with a Pro or Enterprise user you are entering a professional room where a maximum of 24 people can be active at the same time. If you are a Free or Plus user in this meeting you will be a viewer and need to wait for an Enterprise user to give you edit rights. If you want to edit in these meetings or host large collaborative meetings yourself you will need an active Trial, Pro, or Enterprise license. You can learn more about our free trial and our subscriptions on our help pages.
Meeting settings
You can mute yourself in a meeting by selecting the microphone icon behind your name. If you don't see your mic icon light up while talking your microphone is likely not set up correctly. This can be changed by selecting meeting settings in the top left corner. You can also gather all users for guided tours and jump to other users directly. If you don't hear other users make sure your device is pointing to the correct speaker and your sound is turned on.
The host of the meeting can also use their wristband to access the main meeting organization tools. There is a button to open the meeting panel that also shows if your mic is inactive and you can gather all the users or lock the scene in colocated mixed reality.
Edit rights
Pro, Enterprise users always have edit rights in a meeting and can host meetings with up to 24 users. When a free user joins a meeting with a pro user they will convert to a viewer that can only talk, move around, and add temporary sketches and dimensions to the model.
Additional settings
In the meeting settings tab, you can find other settings like your microphone and the name/password of your meeting. You can also set the default way that you want to gather users around you to streamline guided tours by gathering everyone in the meeting (VR and non-VR) to your view direction from your back or to be gathered in a circle in front of you to directly start face-to-face conversations. People who are co-located will be gathered to their physical position in the room.
Data Security
Arkio has a unique security model as we don't store your projects in a cloud, all your Arkio scenes, imported resources, and settings are stored on your local device(s) Your project data is not shared online unless you specifically choose to share your scene and imported data with other Arkio users using a live Arkio meeting.
In Arkio meetings, all the modeling operations and imported resources are sent to other Arkio devices as end-to-end encrypted messages. You can compare this to peer-to-peer sharing. Projects don't get stored in a server but are sent from device to device as a series of encrypted resources and edit operations that get recompiled into Arkio scenes on the other device. This makes Arkio's security model pretty unique as it's hard for unwanted guests to get access to your data without access to your device.
For collaborations with Arkio, you are in control over the confidentiality of your meetings as you can choose complex room names and passwords. For high-security meetings, we recommend meeting names and passwords of at least 10-12 characters long. After a meeting is over and users disconnect from the meeting the Arkio scenes are stored on those devices and no meeting data remains in cloud servers.
If you have questions about our data security for security verification in your organization you can contact us for more details.
Troubleshooting
If you are not seeing other users while using the same Meeting Name and Password you might have a different spelling for the room name and password (try to use a simple name without a password to confirm). It's also possible that one of the participants is using an older version of Arkio and needs to update the app. If you are experiencing internet connection issues you can best troubleshoot by joining another (wireless) network or using a 4G/5G hotspot or tethered phone.
Comments
2 comments
Hi
We are going to do training sessions for up to ten people using Quest Pros at a time. We discovered that if you are several people in the same scene editing models, one user can accidentally undo another user's edit. In short, it's hard to tell what model is being edited by which user. If user A works on model A, and user B on model B, it seems like an undo by user A intended for model A can undo something on model B and vice versa. Can this be avoided somehow? We are thinking that maybe we need to split up the users between different rooms, say, three in three rooms plus an instructor moving between the rooms. But is this possible on an Enterprise license? You can have up to 24 simultaneous users, but can they be in different rooms? In this scenario, it would also be convenient if the instructor could hear all the users (we sidestep this by working in the physical room, however).
Hans Karlsson
CTO, Mimir LLC, Japan
Hi Hans,
This is correct, there is currently one global undo-redo history in meetings. This is something that we plan to improve in future updates of Arkio. For organizing meetings with people still learning Arkio it's best to work in smaller groups and only give a few trainees edit rights while the others are just viewing and cannot edit/undo themselves. This is easier to control when the instructors have an enterprise license to assign temporary guest editors in that meeting.
You can also make use of breakout rooms for students that want to try modeling by themselves during a group session. The users can then disconnect from the general meeting and try all modeling actions in a single user session. Once they are ready for feedback they can host a meeting with a new name (eg group1) for the instructor or other students to join instead. You might have to switch the host of a meeting for someone to share locally created scenes in an active meeting.
Using this approach the student's devices would only require a free license and the instructor needs an enterprise license to host and control who has edit rights during the meetings.
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