Installing an older Archi-Lab should work; You will have to do some trial and error to find out which one though.
In case it helps, here is some boiler plate advice I’ve shared with people to help PMs get over the fear of upgrading.
Reasons to upgrade:
- 2019 hasn’t been supported for awhile now, and as a result is likely missing some security updates which are present in 2020+, and could impact the entire org from a infosec standpoint. Have a look here (note the PDF Tron in particular) for some of these issues: Security Advisories | Autodesk Trust Center
- As 2019 is unsupported, if a model gets corrupted my colleagues in support may not be able to help recover the data. They’ll always do what they can, but there are limits in what we can do with older file formats. Imagine coming in one morning and opening a model to a warning message like “This model contains too many missing elements and cannot be opened, contact support.” That could result in your team having to roll the entire model back a few months to clear out the corruption (assuming you have a viable backup to roll back to) and get back up and running. It’s rare, but I have personally had to deliver such a message in the past.
- 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 all have significant performance, reliability, and stability improvements, in addition to time saving features. This means staff will be more effective in some tasks with new tools, and more productive when simply performing the same routines they perform now.
Reasons to not upgrade a project:
- Ignorance of impact on production
- Lack of planning
- Lack of coordination among team
- Lack of defined internal process
- Unrealistic concern over contract(s)
Cost impact of upgrading: minimal to nil
Risk in not upgrading: significant