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Libraries & objects
About Archicad and BIMcloud libraries, their management and migration, objects and other library parts, etc.

Tweak it in 10, lose it in 9

David Collins
Advocate
A word of caution to anyone who dabbles in GDL tweaking: Any GDL element that has been edited and saved in 10 will no longer open in 9. Make sure you save a 9.0 version of your custom libraries. And a *.pla file for all projects is always a good idea.
David Collins

Win10 64bit Intel i7 6700 3.40 Ghz, 32 Gb RAM, GeForce RTX 3070
AC 27.0 (4001 INT FULL)
13 REPLIES 13
Frank Beister
Moderator
Mattew: I had something similar between 8.1 and 9.0. I ran both parallel and I could open the 9.0 written and saved objec tin 8.1 in the moment the object was opendin AC9 and the same library was loaded in 8.1. It was not reproduceable, but it worked definitvely!

I remember a functionality (in AC 8?) to convert a complete library into the new version. But that AC10 changes the version by its own would be awful!

Maybe it has to do something with the precompilation. By saving (or using) an object the source code of the object is precompiled to translate the most possible into "machine language". This result is saved on hd. On windows machines this are the annoying .gs&-files. On Mac it was up to 9 encapsulated into the HFS-format (macos9-objects have been everytime larger than windows saved ones). On OS X this part is maybe hidden - ".objectname.gs&"?

Assumption: An AC 9.0 object, stripped of its precompiled part, out of which reason ever, ist used in AC10. Loading the library in AC10 precompiles the object and saves the data. Back in 9 the object has an 9.0 source and a 10.0 compiled part, and this is recogniced by AC9, which stops loading? Just an idea.
bim author since 1994 | bim manager since 2018 | author of selfGDL.de | openGDL | skewed archicad user hall of fame | author of bim-all-doors.gsm
David Maudlin
Rockstar
F. wrote:
I remember a functionality (in AC 8?) to convert a complete library into the new version.
There was a command under the "Special" Menu for doing batch conversions, it was there before version 8. Since you had to jump through some hoops to get the Special Menu, it would have been hard to convert files accidentally. Activating the Special Menu is very difficult (impossible?) on the Mac in version 10, so I don't know if this feature is still around.

David
David Maudlin / Architect
www.davidmaudlin.com
Digital Architecture
AC27 USA • iMac 27" 4.0GHz Quad-core i7 OSX11 | 24 gb ram • MacBook Pro M3 Pro | 36 gb ram OSX14
Frank Beister
Moderator
AFAIR there was a way to activate it up to 8.1, but AFAIK there is no specal menu from 9 on included.
bim author since 1994 | bim manager since 2018 | author of selfGDL.de | openGDL | skewed archicad user hall of fame | author of bim-all-doors.gsm
Anonymous
Not applicable
F. wrote:
AFAIR there was a way to activate it up to 8.1, but AFAIK there is no specal menu from 9 on included.
The special menu is still there in 9 (10 too I think). Enabling it is different. This has been discussed but I forget where.