CDOCS a SPEAR Company

The Practice Dongle


For those of you wanting to take your CEREC restorations home and open them on your laptop, you need a license drive. The original license key, a.k.a. "dongle" for the 4.0 software has a retail cost of approximately $5,000. My suggestion is that you do not transport your dongle to and from your office for fear of losing it having to replace it for a large sum.

You can instead order a “practice” dongle. The Sirona part number is shown in the photo below. This practice dongle has a cost of around $50 or so.

This allows you to open any case on your home computer and practice the case. By not having to remove your regular dongle from your machine, you are able to avoid losing the expensive license drive.

These practice dongles can be ordered directly from your Patterson CEREC Specialist.


My problem with this is that a case can't be saved with the practice dongle. The only reason I take a case home is if it is big enough that the Bluecam can't handle it, and I need a faster processor and more RAM. My home PC can run circles around the Bluecam.


Chip- that is true but at the moment, thats the only way you can access your files at home without having to take your license home.


When we get inlab 4.0 would we still need a practice dongle?


Practice dongle could only open/import the case form my Omnicam but can't save it?

So, if I need to design a case then saving it, still need to use the full-function dongle, right?