Archicad users and experiences?

Hello,

I received a .pln file from Archicad Start 14 (vintage 2011) and wanted to export some views from it. For this, I enlisted an acquaintance studying civil engineering who has a licensed Archicad 26 EDU version. Unfortunately, the 14 file cannot be opened with the 26 EDU. I have been googling unsuccessfully for quite some time now, trying to figure out how this could work. There are converters from versions >10 to 10, but nothing beyond that.

Can anyone here possibly help or have a solution approach?

ArchiCAD is, to my knowledge, max. 2 versions forward/backward compatible

According to the ArchiCAD website, all versions from 10 and newer should be able to read files down to version 8.1.
When writing, as previously mentioned, compatibility is usually only guaranteed across one to two versions.
I myself have not experienced such a large version jump. So far, opening files has generally worked well – although there have sometimes been issues with the libraries. There can be quite a lot of changes from one version to another!
So I can imagine that the version for students is restricted in that regard. Or the file might be corrupted.

Most CAD files ultimately consist of vector data (text) + file header. I would create a test file and a copy of the mentioned file, open them with Notepad++ and compare the headers or copy/paste to adjust. It can't go any worse than that.

I can therefore imagine that the version for students is limited in that regard. Or the file is corrupted.

The student version can open a maximum of two versions "back".