Installing SphereHarness

One installer per CAD system, and every one of them carries the desktop agent and the shared files. Install for a second CAD system and the shared parts are reused, never duplicated — you never end up with two agents.

One installer per CAD system

Download them from Downloads in the portal (see Downloads). Take the one for the CAD system you use; take both if you use two.

CAD system	What the installer adds to it	Detailed page
Inventor	The SphereHarness ribbon panel	Inventor
NX	The SphereHarness ribbon tab, with a separate build for each supported NX release (NX 2306, 2412, 2506 and Designcenter NX 2512) in the one installer	NX
Solid Edge	The SphereHarness ribbon tab	Solid Edge
AutoCAD	The SphereHarness plug-in, its ribbon tab and its commands	AutoCAD

Close the CAD application before you install, and start it again afterwards. Several of these register add-ins only while starting, so an installer that runs over a live session leaves you looking for a tab that is not there yet.

What every installer carries

Whichever one you run, you get three things and not just the add-in:

The desktop agent — the floating balloon and chat card you actually talk to, plus its Start-menu shortcut. It is included with every CAD licence; without a CAD system it comes with a desktop-agent-only licence. See The Desktop Agent.
The shared configuration and knowledge folder — machine-wide settings such as which server the add-ins connect to, and the knowledge the assistant ships with.
The document index service, if you choose that feature — what makes indexed documents searchable on this PC.

Starting the agent at sign-in is optional in two places: the installer carries a run the agent when you sign in to Windows feature you can leave out, and the agent itself has Start with Windows under Settings → Agent. With neither on, you start it from the Start menu or from the ribbon button in your CAD system.

Installing the agent on its own

For a PC with no CAD system there is one more installer, Desktop agent (no CAD add-in) (CADCoPilot.Agent.Setup.msi). It installs exactly the shared parts above — the desktop agent with its Windows UI helper, the shared configuration and knowledge folder, and the optional document index — and no CAD add-in. It needs a desktop-agent-only licence or any CAD licence.

It mixes freely with the CAD installers, in either order. Install it first and a CAD installer later: the agent is reused, not installed twice. Install a CAD system first and this later: the same. It appears in Apps & features as SphereHarness desktop agent.
Uninstalling it leaves a CAD system working, and uninstalling the last CAD system leaves it working: the shared parts go only with the last SphereHarness product on the PC.
The Windows UI helper is only files beside the agent (Agent\WindowsUi). No Windows service, scheduled task or start-up entry is added for it; the agent starts it when it needs it.

Microsoft .NET 8

SphereHarness runs on Microsoft .NET 8: the .NET Runtime, the .NET Windows Desktop Runtime and the ASP.NET Core Runtime, all version 8, 64-bit. Every installer checks for them before it installs anything:

One is missing: the installer stops, installs nothing and names what to install — for example “Install the .NET Windows Desktop Runtime 8.0.30 x64 (it includes the .NET Runtime) and the ASP.NET Core Runtime 8.0.30 x64 from https://dotnet.microsoft.com/download/dotnet/8.0, then run this installer again.” Install them from Microsoft's page and run the installer again.
The Windows Desktop Runtime is older than the .NET Runtime (say .NET 8.0.30 with Desktop 8.0.21): the installer carries on and warns you. SphereHarness works; only C# journals in NX 2506 and newer need the Desktop Runtime of the same version (VB journals and compiled DLLs do not), so install the Windows Desktop Runtime <that version> x64 it names. When the agent starts NX itself, it works around the difference.
For IT: a silent install (msiexec /qn, see Silent & unattended install) refuses the same way and writes the sentence to the install log. Deploy the .NET 8 runtimes first; if your deployment tool installs them after SphereHarness in the same push, add SH_SKIP_DOTNET_CHECK=1 to the SphereHarness command line.

The installer does not download or install .NET itself — Windows installs Microsoft's runtime with Microsoft's own installer, from Microsoft's page.

The agent's built-in browser uses the Microsoft Edge WebView2 Runtime, which Windows 11 and most Windows 10 PCs already have. If it is missing, the installer carries on and warns you; everything except the browser works. Install the Evergreen WebView2 Runtime from https://developer.microsoft.com/microsoft-edge/webview2/.

Installing a second CAD system

This is the part that is designed to be boring. Run a second installer and:

The agent is not installed twice. The existing copy is reused. There is one agent on the PC and it talks to every CAD system you have running — see Several CAD systems at once.
The shared files are not copied again when they are already there at the same version. That is why the second install is much quicker than the first.
If the second installer is newer, it upgrades the shared parts and your first CAD system keeps working with the upgraded copy. Its own add-in is left alone.
Uninstalling one CAD system does not break the other. The shared parts are counted: they are removed only when the last SphereHarness installer is uninstalled.

The version rule

All the installers of one release carry the same version number, and that is what decides upgrades: a shared file is replaced only when the incoming one is newer. Keep your installers at one version. A mixture — a new add-in for one CAD system and a much older one for another — means whichever you install last decides what the shared agent is, and an older installer cannot upgrade a newer shared file. If in doubt, download the current version of every installer you use and run them in any order.

A release can move one CAD system ahead of the others. That is not a mixture to worry about: take the current installer of each CAD system you use, and the shared parts keep the newer copy whichever order you run them in.

Signed installers

Every installer, and every program file of ours inside it, is signed with the EV code-signing certificate of PLM CAD UTILITIES AS, the company behind SphereHarness. Windows shows that name as the publisher when it asks for administrator rights, and the signature proves the file has not been changed since it was signed.

Check a signature yourself: right-click the .msi (or an installed .dll / .exe) → Properties → Digital Signatures. The signer is PLM CAD UTILITIES AS; select it and press Details to see “This digital signature is OK.” No Digital Signatures tab, or a different signer, means the file is not one we published — do not install it, and open a support request.
Third-party libraries shipped alongside keep their own publisher's signature (or none, if their author does not sign them). We do not re-sign somebody else's file as ours.
The NX parts that NX itself checks also carry Siemens NX Open signatures, so no NX Open author licence is needed to run the add-in. See NX.

The SHA-256 on the Downloads page is the checksum of the signed file, so it and the signature agree.

Where things land

What	Where
The desktop agent	`%ProgramFiles%\SphereHarness\Agent`
Each CAD system's add-in	`%ProgramFiles%\SphereHarness\<CAD system>`
Machine-wide configuration and the knowledge folder	`%ProgramData%\SphereHarness`
Start-menu shortcut	A SphereHarness group for all users

Installing is for all users of the PC and needs administrator rights, which is why Windows asks. Your own settings, chats and signed-in account are per user and are kept elsewhere — reinstalling does not touch them.

Upgrading from an older installation. Builds before the rename used a CAD CoPilot folder. The new installer removes the old product and its folder as part of the upgrade, and the product still finds an older installation's configuration file if one is left, so a machine-wide server address survives the change.

Uninstalling

Close the CAD applications and quit the desktop agent from its tray menu. A file in use cannot be removed and the uninstall will say so.
Uninstall the CAD systems you no longer want from Apps & features, in any order. Each entry names its CAD system.
The last one takes the shared parts with it — the agent, the shared folders, the Start-menu group and the run-at-sign-in entry all go when no SphereHarness installer is left.

A folder that still holds a file nobody installed — something you copied in by hand — is left behind on purpose. That is correct behaviour, not a failed uninstall: delete it yourself if you want it gone.

If something is missing afterwards

No ribbon tab or button. Restart the CAD application once more. If it is still missing, see Troubleshooting & FAQ.
The agent does not start with Windows. The option was not ticked. Start it from the Start menu or the ribbon button; re-running the installer and choosing Change lets you turn it on.
The add-in asks for a seat. You installed correctly — your organisation has not assigned you one. See Licences and pricing.
You are told a newer version exists. See Downloads; nothing installs itself.