• TechNotes
• Conversion of old ArchiCAD project files into ArchiCAD 9

For converting documents older than ArchiCAD 5.0 click here

Notes: Projects that are well on their way in an earlier version may not be prime candidates for converting to Archicad 9. The advantages of the upgrade may be counterbalanced by the effort needed to prepare the project for the newer environment.

Hereinafter you can find the method of conversion using Archive file (*.PLA)

1. Save as ArchiCAD Archive Project in earlier version.
   
   The project is opened in the earlier version of ArchiCAD, to save it as archive project go to File menu > Save special > Archive… and here save the PLA. If you check the options as seen on the picture above, only those library parts will be saved that are used in the project file.

2. Open the old PLA in ArchiCAD 9
   File menu > Open > select the previously saved file. A dialog appears and lets you choose from 3 options:

   • Read elements directly from archive
   • Extract elements to a folder
   • Select a library

   Choose the element extraction to folder option and a *.lib folder will be created.
   
   If you chose the direct from archive reading, you won’t have external access to the library.
   

3. Using ArchiCAD 9 library
   At opening an Archive project only those libraries will be loaded that were used in the old project. To access other ArchiCAD libraries (e.g. ArchiCAD Library 9) you have to load them in the Library Manager.

4. The following messages may come up at opening the PLA:
   
   This message is only a note, and the program won't have any problem because the libraryparts are identified through an internal ID the GUID. But if you want to omit this warning you should delete the old database names in the extracted .lib folder. The elements to delete:
   Finally save your file with a new name in your folder structure.

Hints:

• At converting projects older than ArchiCAD 6.5 you will get the following Message in the Library Loading Report window.
  
  In the earlier ArchiCAD versions the same library parts have identical names (without the version ending like bed_65.gsm). This message comes because the loaded ArchiCAD Library 9 and the created *.lib library contains elements with the same name. During the *.lib library is loaded the old library parts are used with their old parameter settings. As soon as the *.lib folder will be removed the old library parts will be substituted by the lib parts from the AC 9 library, and their parameters will be lost.
  See detailed description on Library part identification in the article: GUID

• Zones:
  The old zones will be converted, but these may not support the new listingparameters for area calculation. So we advise reassign all Zone categories at Options > Attribute settings… > Zone Categories.

Related article

ArchiCAD versions overview
Notes on updating Libraries

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