Why does Platform Designer in the Intel® Quartus® Prime Pro Edition Software fail to open a system that was created using the Intel® Quartus® Prime Standard Edition Software?

Due to a problem in the Intel® Quartus® Prime Pro Edition Software v21.2 or earlier, the following error may occur when you open a system (.qsys) in Platform Designer that was created using the Intel® Quartus® Prime Standard Edition Software:

Error: An unexpected error occurred during Open System: java.lang.NullPointerException

This error may occur when an intellectual property (IP) component in the system is not included in the Intel® Quartus® Prime Pro Edition Software IP library.

To work around this problem in the Intel Quartus Prime Pro Edition Software v21.2 or earlier, follow these steps:

1. Examine the warnings in the Open System log in Platform Designer Pro to identify the IP(s) that are not included in the library. You may look for warnings similar to this warning below:

 Warning: <INSTANCE>: Component type <IP_NAME> is not in the library

2. Remove these IP components from the system in the Intel Quartus Prime Standard Edition Software and save the modified system.
3. You should now be able to open the system in the Intel Quartus Prime Pro Edition Software and proceed to replace the IP components.
4. Refer to Section 5.3 - Upgrade IP Cores and Platform Designer Systems in Intel Quartus Prime Pro Edition User Guide: Getting Started.

This problem is fixed starting with the Intel® Quartus® Prime Pro Edition software version 21.3.