CVAD Remote Access Computing
The College of Visual Arts and Design is committed to providing faculty and students with the latest technology required to succeed in a creative, artistic profession. We offer remote computing solutions for both the Windows OS and Mac OSX.
The computers are available from on- and off-campus, from any computer (personally-owned or university-owned).
There are five remote pools of computers available and every student on campus and every instructor in CVAD will have access to at least one of the pools.
Instructions for connecting to the remote pool computers are included further down on the page.
Remote Pools
The CVAD Instructor Pool is currently Windows-only and exclusively available to instructors in CVAD. They are intended to be used in the classrooms, which have Macs installed at each instructor lectern (connected to the room's audio-visual equipment) for instructors to access the Windows software used in their classes.
The CVAD Classroom Pool consists of both Windows and Macs. These are intended to be used by students currently enrolled in a CVAD course while they attend class remotely. Only those students enrolled in a class scheduled for one of the general computer classrooms (ART 233, ART 313, ART 338) will have access to these computers.
The CVAD New Media Pool consists of only Mac computers. Only those students enrolled in a New Media class will have access to these computers. The physical New Media classroom is located in ART 356.
The CVAD Photography Pool consists of only Mac computers. Only those students enrolled in a Photography class will have access to these computers. The physical Photography Lab is located in ART 360.
The CVAD Student Computer Lab Pool consists of both Windows and Macs and is available to every student currently enrolled in a course in any college or school on campus.
These computers are wiped and reimaged regularly for updates and new software and you are not guaranteed to get the same computer each time you log in. When using a remote pool computer, save your work on a USB drive or use a cloud service such as OneDrive, which is available to all students, faculty, and staff free of charge.
Software
The remote pool computers offer many of the same software packages that are available on-campus. Software licensing restrictions do not allow us to offer every package, however.
- Adobe Creative Cloud: due to a licensing restriction from Adobe, student Adobe Creative Cloud licenses provided to students (shared device licenses) by the UNT campus agreement will not work on computers accessed remotely. Those licenses can only be used to access Adobe Creative Cloud while physically on campus and using a university-owned computer in the Student Computer Labs, CVAD Computer Classrooms, and on our Classroom on Wheels laptops. The campus agreement provides a different license type for faculty (named user licenses) which can be used on any computer, anywhere. These accounts will work on the remote access pool computers. Students who need or would like a named user license will need to purchase a personal license from Adobe.
- Sketchup: Due to a licensing restriction from Trimble, Sketchup for Windows is not available by remote access. It is available by remote access on the Mac platform. For Windows, it is available in the CVAD Student Computer Lab, CVAD Computer Classrooms, CVAD Checkout Laptops, and on our Classroom on Wheels laptops.
The list of software available on on-campus and remote access computers can be found on the CVAD Student Computer Lab & Computer Classrooms Software page.
If you would like a free or open-source piece of software installed in the computer lab, we would be happy to oblige. Just submit a ticket (ticket type: Ask Question) and send us the URL through the form.