Many thanks. Seems like a lot of trouble to have to reinstall the older version of Alibre along with getting your licence rolled back, so I decided to try Keyshot, seeing as though Photorender is being phased out.
I have only tried Keyshot in Demo mode and on two models. The one it imported ok....I don't know the tricks to get a quality render...in fact it looked quite poor, HOWEVER I have seen the demo files that show good quality rendering.
I then tried another model. A more complicated assembly and imported it via STEP format, and Keyshot went about destroying it, ie disassembling it. It was a complete mess.
I then obtained my licence file for Keyshot, but every time I enter it, it merely says it cannot connect to the server at this time. I have tried a number of times (and all of those times my internet connection was live)
Perplexed.....