Updating an old template to Version 24

[Anonymous]

My company recently lost our Archicad expert and we find ourselves with only a handful of intermediate users. We have been using V21 and are ready to update our template for V24. We had a conversation with our Archicad Rep and it was suggested to us that we should make the V24 template from scratch instead of migrating it.

Can anyone shed some light as to why we would want to create it from scratch vs bringing our old template and libraries into V24? We want to be able to weigh the time it would take to create a new template from scratch against the problems we could encounter by just bringing the old template into the new version.

Any advice is helpful!
thank you!

[schagemann]

In a nutshell there is no need to redo your complete template when upgrading to a new version.

However, certain parts may not migrate properly depending on how 'customised' they are - specifically you need to be careful about the following:

1. New features > consider what has changed between versions and amend accordingly, e.g. when GS introduced Building Materials;

2. Work Environment > if you have a custom one (you should), redo from scratch between every version;

3. Library parts > check that any custom ones still work as GS makes ever so slight changes to GDL - unfortunately at times badly documented;

Hope that helps?

[Barry Kelly]

As shagemann said, there should be no problem opening your old template up in a new version.
I have been using the same template since version 8.5 and have just made sure that I have incorporated any new features that I need.

It really depends what you have in your template.There should be no need to update any attributes unless you feel the need to.
Your old libraries should work just fine - the biggest GDL change that was a bit of a problem was moving to 19 & 20. Since then it has been pretty good - of course there are new command you can make use of but probably no need to worry about them.
If you have a custom Work Environment, you will need to amend it to include the new commands & features, if not just use the new default WE.

Basically just open your old template in 24 and see what happens.
I am jumping from 22 to 24 at the moment and have not had to do anything to my template.
I have amended my WE, but that has nothing to do with the template anyway.


Barry.

[Gordana Radonic]

Hi All,

If you are still interested in this topic of updating templates, there are two documents released by GRAPHISOFT which might help in checking all the points necessary for updating templates from version 21 and 22 (considering new features of 22 and 23):
https://learn.graphisoft.com/user_catalog_digital_media/show/306
https://learn.graphisoft.com/user_catalog_digital_media/show/308

If you are on subscription, you can download these workflow guides for free.
I'll keep you posted about the one upgrading to 24!

Kind regards,
Gordana

[agroni]

In my opinion the template is a bit more then just opening it in a new version and continuing. Libraries have to be correct, attributes, favorites, Views and Layouts. The work environment is actually something, that I don’t consider a direct part of the template.
In our office I am responsible for upgrading the entire office to new version, for which I did some weeks ago to AC24. You also need to review the new options and how you could integrated them into your template. An example is the new option of appending a new index number to attributes. From previous upgrades I had a bad experience with deleting (actually replacing) certain fills, which resulted in tons of reports with missing attributes. So it is a question of adaptation and testing your environment.