How do you open a .lay file?

[Ameen]

Good day

I am trying open some files that were backed up from a very old project which were saved in .lay format. I am using archicad 15 on an i macOS X El Capitan Version 10.11.6. 

I tried installing Archicad 8.1 onto the iMac which I believe has plotmaker which may be capable of opening the .lay files, however, my I Mac sends up the message "power pc application no longer supported". I realised that even if I am able to install archicad 8, I don't have the old license keys.

Is there any way that one can now open .lay files without having to use plotmaker or one of the older applications? Is there a file converter perhaps?

[Eduardo Rolon]

They are here:

https://graphisoft.com/downloads/fileconverter

Also try using File->Interoperability->Merge to check if it imports the file.

[Ameen]

Hi Eduardo

Thanks for such a fast response. Unfortunately, the download links on the File Converter page don't work. I've tried using the Merge function, but it also didn't work.

[Eduardo Rolon]

Notifying the issue for the downloads.

[Lee Hankins]

The file converter versions of Archicad won’t work on modern Mac operating systems. I have to keep a copy of Parallels Desktop to run Windows which has the older file converter versions of Archicad to be able to open our old projects from Archicad 5 to 10.