cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 
cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 
Installation & update
About program installation and update, hardware, operating systems, setup, etc.

Open AC 5 file

Anonymous
Not applicable
How can I open and use an ArchiCAD version 5 file when I am working on a Mac with OSX 10.9.2 in ArchiCAD 17? I have ArchiCAD 10 but it will not work any longer since I upgraded to OSX 10.9.
2 REPLIES 2
Karl Ottenstein
Moderator
You can't.

See the table towards the bottom:
http://www.archicadwiki.com/ArchiCAD%20versions

AC 9 is the last version to be able to open AC 5 files... and 9 never ran on Intel Macs... only the old PPC.

You either need to find an old PPC Mac.. or install Windows onto your 10.9 system using virtualization software (e.g., Parallels Desktop 9) - or Bootcamp - and the install then Windows version of AC 9. Pnce converted from 5 to 9... you can open the 9 file in any recent version.
One of the forum moderators
AC 28 USA and earlier   •   macOS Ventura 13.7, MacBook Pro M2 Max 12CPU/30GPU cores, 32GB
Karl Ottenstein
Moderator
I posted too quickly on Monday... other options include booting into Snow Leopard, if you still have a bootable SL disk around, or getting a junker PC.

I've kept a bootable SL partition just in case I needed to run an old PPC app, as SL still has the Rosetta emulation mode to run PPC apps on Intel Macs. I've not needed to use it to date.

Running Windows under Parallels in order to run old Windows versions of AC requires buying Parallela and a Windows license. You can probably find an old junker XP machine somewhere cheaper.
One of the forum moderators
AC 28 USA and earlier   •   macOS Ventura 13.7, MacBook Pro M2 Max 12CPU/30GPU cores, 32GB