Alibre v28 upgrade issue now solved

Published by James G. in Upgrades · 18 February 2025

*Update on 25/2/2025. The problem is sorted. Just download the latest version. After 20th April 2025 Pro upgrades cost a small fee (to cover our costs). Basic upgrades will likely remain free.

A disturbing new development occurred with some customers who upgraded to the latest v28 of Alibre.

This takes form of a crash when the solver program calls up the license checker program. See below..

None of these customers used the side-by-side installation so they deleted the older Alibre. Reinstalling the older Alibre still doesn't work even if it worked before the upgrade.

It is a crash in Windows .net runtime; ie what programs using the C# language must use. Femdesigner does not use C# but Alibre and the license checker do. The too common occurrence of untrapped, random crashes like the one above is the principal thing that puts us off using .net but our software is unavoidably a C++ filling in a C# sandwich.

This crash did not happen with us when we upgraded to the latest version. All that is different is that we still use Windows 10 for programming and we installed side-by-side with the previous Alibre version.

It seems that a new .net runtime is installed by the newer Alibre and it is not backwards compatible with the version used to program the license checker. However our licensing system is no longer being upgraded. My last user support message from them was 'use another system'. But it all worked well until now. We are now trying out a new licensing system to fix this issue.

My advice for now is to install the side-by-side option which preserves the older AlibreDesign which will should work ok with Femdesigner and will preserve the old .net runtime. Then copy the old FemforAD folder from the older Alibre Addons folder and paste it to the new addons folder. If you get a similar crash let us know and just use the older Alibre for FEA until we can fix it. Perhaps reloading an older .net runtime may work but we have to firstly replicate the problem to test that out.

Alternatively avoid upgrading until you read here that it is sorted. That way you won't be stuck unable to use a model created on the new version. The problem upgrade is anything after Alibre 28126.