!Restored: ArchiCAD 11 Student Version to 12 Professional

[Chris Grantham]

Hi,
I am trying to open a project that was originally created in ArchiCAD 11 student version in ArchiCAD 12 full version. Currently it opens but says that it must revert back to student version to open. Is it possible to convert this over to a full fledge release 12 .pln? Also the 11 has been deleted from the machine, so the when I open the model it is searching for the 11 library parts. Is there any way to get the old 11 library so that I can salvage something workable from this model? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!!
-Chris

[TomWaltz]

Link wrote:

TomWaltz wrote:
but you probably won't get anything usable 3D out of it.

Not even gsm?

Would you call that "usable?" 😉

[Thomas Holm]

Chris wrote:
well here is the deal. The firm that I just started working for had started a project in the student version to see if they liked the program. Of course they did and ended up buying 3 seats. Unfortunately they put nearly 100 hours into the model in the student version. This was not my decision and I hadn't even started working at the firm, but now I am here and it is my job to fix it. Any ideas?

Chris, the best idea I think is to contact Graphisoft through your reseller. They are the only ones who could be able to help you with this.

[Chris Grantham]

Thanks for all of the responses everyone. I have contacted our local dealer with the problem, and the only solution I was able to get from them was to convert to an ifc file. This preserved the 3D elements of the model, but created a nightmare when it came to layers and most objects in the model. I think for the time being I am going to do the old .dwg and trace. I think with that I should be able to hammer this thing out in half the time if not less. At the least we will have some plans that can be printed early on. Again thanks for everyone's help!

-Chris

[Eduardo Rolon]

BTW Chris, you do know that using a Student Version in a Commercial Environment is illegal?

[Laura Yanoviak]

ejrolon wrote:
BTW Chris, you do know that using a Student Version in a Commercial Environment is illegal?

As Chris stated -- he didn't have anything to do with the decision.

Chris -- good to see you landed a job in an AC firm -- and you're using AC12! (we're not) -- LJY.

[Eduardo Rolon]

I know that it is not his fault Laura, but this thread has documented a lot of options on how to use an educational version for a purpose that it is not licensed for. The last thing I want is for GS to pull the plug on the free Student and University Versions and having students or the school buy them. One (of many) of the reasons I have used to justify for teaching AC as primary BIM and not Revit is the ease of requirements to get a students license.
I am not accusing anyone here, I just want to make sure that when people search for this thread they also know on the record that this is not OK.

[Chris Grantham]

The architect was so impressed with the student's work on ArchiCAD 11 that it resulted in him purchasing 3 new LEGAL seats of ArchiCAD 12.

[Eduardo Rolon]

He could have been as easily impressed using the Demo version.

[henrypootel]

I agree. Just because it resulted in some sales doesn't discount the fact that commercial use of the student version is explicitly forbidden in the License agreement that they agreed to by installing the software.
If converting to IFC had worked, then yay!, but it is still extremely bad business practice to knowingly violate your suppliers agreement, and then expect them to bail you out when you run into trouble just becasue you are a legit customer now.
Using the Trial version would have allowed them to do the same thing the legitimate way, and also has a very easy and reliable path to convert to the full Commercial version.

[Chris Grantham]

I think that they might have been a bit confused about the differences in the Student Version and the Trial Version. It was an error, but not done with any malicious intent. I agree that violating the EULA is bad juju. Hopefully I have banked some good karma! Again thank you everyone for your help. I was able to recoup much of the work in about 15-20 hours.

-Chris