John, What steven said is correct, a student version cannot open a commercial part, the reason for this is because PTC is aware that many small vendors would purchase the student version instead of the commercial version to do exactly what you want, open 1 file and be done with it, however you do not want to purchase a seat of Proe, understandable, it is expensive. Maybe you could ask your customer to give you the part in a neutral CAD format, ie. preferrably STEP, therefore you could then translate and open it in any CAD software that you would like.