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Libraries & objects
About Archicad and BIMcloud libraries, their management and migration, objects and other library parts, etc.

Library has an expiry date

Not applicable
I have a .lcf library file, but it has an expiry date, so I cannot access the library parts after that date (only way to use it is to back date my computers date & time).
Can anyone help and show me how I to adjust or remove the expiry date?
5 REPLIES 5
Karl Ottenstein
Moderator
I'm not aware of any technology within AC that allows or enforces library lcf expiration dates. Certainly not Graphisoft libraries.

It is probably not the lcf, but if you purchased the lcf from a 3rd party, they might have their own special protection scheme in place. If that is the case, then you can 'unpack' the lcf into an ordinary folder of objects and use the objects directly, assuming that they do not also rely on some macro that enforces some kind of protection scheme.

Can you tell us more about this lcf and show a screenshot that describes the expiration date?
AC 28 USA and earlier   •   macOS Sequoia 15.2, MacBook Pro M2 Max 12CPU/30GPU cores, 32GB
One of the forum moderators
Barry Kelly
Moderator
What library is it?
Barry.
One of the forum moderators.
Versions 6.5 to 27
i7-10700 @ 2.9Ghz, 32GB ram, GeForce RTX 2060 (6GB), Windows 10
Lenovo Thinkpad - i7-1270P 2.20 GHz, 32GB RAM, Nvidia T550, Windows 11
Not applicable
It’s a privately built library that requires updating every few years, after a certain date it is not accessible. I can still load it, but when I try to insert an object from the library I get a message saying it needs updating and cannot insert the object in my drawing.
I can extract it down to .gsm files (these also have the same restrictions attached). Is there some software I can use to access these folders to change the dates, or is it more to do with folder permissions. If so how can I edit this?
Barry Kelly
Moderator
Can you show a screen shot of the error message?
Barry.
One of the forum moderators.
Versions 6.5 to 27
i7-10700 @ 2.9Ghz, 32GB ram, GeForce RTX 2060 (6GB), Windows 10
Lenovo Thinkpad - i7-1270P 2.20 GHz, 32GB RAM, Nvidia T550, Windows 11
Hmooslechner
Moderator
10 years ago - i also tried to make an expiry - date in GDL - when i wanted to make money with it. But the market was too litttle - so i let it be.

Its relativ easy to do by getting the date and compare it with the current date - and jump out of the normal program.

In these days, it was not possible to scramble the code really. In normal Microsoft - word - it was possible to open the GDL-Script anyway...

Today i dont know a way to open crambled code of GDL.


Why dont you direct contact the programmer of this special library?
Was it so expensive?
Maybe you could tell him your problems with expiring date directly and you both get a solution?
AC5.5-AC27EduAut, PC-Win10, MacbookAirM1, MacbookM1Max, Win-I7+Nvidia