Project data & BIM
About BIM-based management of attributes, schedules, templates, favorites, hotlinks, projects in general, quality assurance, etc.

Archicad File Converter

ngoldie
Participant
Hi,

I was wondering if anyone knew how to open an old Archicad .pln file after downloading the 6.5 file converter, I'm not sure what to do next?
I need to convert it to Archicad 20...

Thanks,
Naomi
Archicad 20
MacBook Pro - laptop
6 REPLIES 6
vistasp
Advisor
Does this thread help?

http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?p=267798
= v i s t a s p =
bT Square Peg
https://archicadstuff.blogspot.com
https://www.btsquarepeg.com
| AC 9-27 INT | Win11 | Ryzen 5700 | 32 GB | RTX 3050 |
ngoldie
Participant
Hi vistasp

It could help, thanks! I'll work my way through it.

Cheers,
Naomi
Archicad 20
MacBook Pro - laptop
mikas
Expert
ngoldie wrote:
..how to open an old Archicad .pln file after downloading the 6.5 file converter..
I need to convert it to Archicad 20...
I think your OSX must be at least 10.9, and probably even newer?
Sorry to say, but the procedure is a little bit difficult with a Mac nowadays.

ArchiCAD 6.5 converter does not work in your Mac. Neither does ArchiCAD 9 converter. You would need Snow Leopard (OSX 10.6) to run Rosetta environment (it is a PPC emulator software) to run the above mentioned converters (AC6.5 and AC9). AC 10 converter works with intel Macs and newer OS X versions, but it does not open the oldest pln-files.

If your old files are of version 6 or even older, you are out of luck with your machine, because you would need snow leopard to open those files first, and then you could go on further.

You might have a friend with a WinPC. A PC probably can run all the converters available for windows OS versions. I am not sure.

What opens which versions:
File versions matrix

This is why I still have an old iMac 24" with OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard available. And we still do have some ArchiCAD 3.42 files on floppy disks somewhere.
AC25, Rhino6/7+Grasshopper, TwinMotionMac Pro 6,1 E5-1650v2-3,5GHz/128GB/eGPU:6800XT/11.6.5 • HP Z4/Xeon W-2195/256GB/RX6800XT/W10ProWS
ngoldie
Participant
Ah ok, thanks for the reply
Archicad 20
MacBook Pro - laptop
Anonymous
Not applicable
what about an old 6 or 6.5, 7 or even ACAD 8 PLN files? How can I open these?

pturbo
mikas
Expert
According to conversion matrix you can use version 10 converter for all the mentioned files but not AC6.PLN. For that you will need version 9 converter (or version 7).

Converters

If you are on a Mac please keep in mind:
"The ARCHICAD 9 converter package cannot be run on Mac OS X 10.7 and newer" and
"The ARCHICAD 7 converter package cannot be run on Mac OS X 10.7 and newer"
AC25, Rhino6/7+Grasshopper, TwinMotionMac Pro 6,1 E5-1650v2-3,5GHz/128GB/eGPU:6800XT/11.6.5 • HP Z4/Xeon W-2195/256GB/RX6800XT/W10ProWS