Converting Educational file to Commercial

[Bill]

We had a student intern create a summer student project with the educational version.

The project has now turned into a viable commercial preojct... we'd therefore now like to use the file with our commercial v17 licenses, but can't seem to remove the 'education version' logo.

How can I do so?

Thanks

Bill

[Steve Jepson]

If you open a Education version with an Commercial version of the program, it will automatically switch your Commercial version to Educational mode.

The logo? Getting rid of the logo is easy but that does not change the legality of using an Educational version for Commercial purposes.

Print as a .pdf first. Then select the unwanted logo with the Edit Objects tool in the Adobe Acrobat and delete it.

[Bill]

Thanks for the quick response, I'll try using Acrobat.

I don't think there's anything illegal here. The student worked on the project, as a student while at the university. We've now secured funding to be able to take the project from a student-only study to an actual, to-be-built project. Therefore, we want to do the project on our commercial-licensed Archicad. Seems quite silly to have to replicate all of the work in order to not have that logo show up on any direct prints, simply because the student took the initiative to use the program. We are not at all doing commercial work with a student license.

Bill

[Steve Jepson]

I am sure you are correct. I can't imagine anything wrong with that.

[Gerald Hoffman]

Bill, I think the problem Graphisoft would have is that if they allowed this there is nothing to stop someone from getting a student(s) to do work on Student licences and then just import their work into a regular version. They would get the benefit of work done on a free licenced version for commercial purposes.

Just guessing unless I am missing something.

Cheers,

[Bill]

I can understand that scenario, Gerald.

But here, the initial work was done as a student, not for commercial purposes. Do I have no recourse but to spend many, many hours recreating work that was already done? That does not feel like a smart way to spend my time.

Do all student-use programs work like this? If, for example, the student had done their student work in another program and then exported it into a format I could bring in (Sketchup is one, I know) then this may very well not be an issue. Seems like Graphisoft is penalizing me in this case, if I want to try to recommend Archicad to students.

[Richard Morrison]

Have you tried a copy/paste into a blank commercial-license PLN? IFC export from the EDU? DWG export as a last resort?

That said, annoying as it may be to you, I really don't see how you can reasonably expect to take advantage of student work in the EDU version to save you time for a (now) commercial project.

[Eduardo Rolon]

All students versions work like this and most End User License Agreements prohibit the use of EDU software for commercial projects. In this case it can be argued that using the project created on the EDU version to get the money in order to build it is a violation of this rule. If the project had any hope of being funded then the student should not have been using an EDU version of AC. You could have bought a time license (30 days) for the duration.

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I was trying to avoid commenting on this topic since it is my opinion that ethically you need to redo all the work. But some random thoughts on the matter follow and they can be ignored:

1. Did you pay the student for his work? If not why and now that the project has funding will you pay his hours?
2. While I was studying there was this professor who gave students projects based on the ones he had on his office and then used them to present them to his clients. The minimum thing that happened was that he was fired from the University and almost had his architects license revoked.
3. Do you trust that all the work of the student is usable? recreating the project will let you do a quality control check on his work.
4. I was a member of a thesis committee were one of the students wanted to do a project based on a real site with a "possible" real proposal at the first review all members of the committee informed the student that if that was the case then all members were quitting the review panel.
5. Imagine the case that I get a student to create a set of plans for a project then I go to your office and asked you to sign them and inform that I will not pay any fees except the percentage for the signature which should be around 10% of the project since all other phases are already done. Will you accept this?
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That being said if you trust that the student work is up to par I would try to export to IFC and link/import the file in AC and use that as the base of the project.

BTW Copy/Paste won't work.