First let me say this is a excellent product. It does everything it says it will and does it very intuitively. I had used Advent's earliest products for many years, upgraded regularly and purchased its "shader" disks to the tune of many thousands of dollars, but the product was very useful.

Then, one fine day they decided the upgrade path had ended and provided no means of using the existing product or it's shaders. They required a substantial investment (believe me $995 barely gets you in the door) to get back where you were. There are no work-around's. It's just a greedy smack in the wallet.

But take heart, there are many, many excellent alternatives for rendering from ArchiCad or Google SketchUp, and they are way, way less costly.