On Land

v2 is here. It seems to work. The good news is that layout books open like they were never closed. Fast! View updates are much faster too. The bad news, well, ya never know! Sigh. Seriously, I used it all week and it's OK. Still, it's good to be cautious.

Two gotchas so far (maybe you'll be lucky): 1) In PM, after stretching a frame with the arrow tool, frame nodes will not be detectable until you rebuild. Scroll-zooming forces a rebuild so that takes care of it. 2) After rebuilding drawings via drawing usage, the layout window becomes unresponsive. Minimize the window to the dock using the yellow title bar button. Bring it back, and it's OK. I think GS's beta testing consists entirely of demonstrating the software to their dogs. I digress.

The howto follows.

Create a folder, on the desktop is fine, called 'ACv2 Backup' or something. In it, copy the following: The Archicad 8.1 Folder from Applications. The 'Graphisoft' folder from /Library/Preferences. The 'Local Cache Library' from /Library/Caches/Graphisoft. Note: all this is just in case.

Delete the local cache library form the location above. Trust me.

Run the updater, 'Archicad 8.1 Updater', located at 3 Resources(Onion)/AC Program Files. Restart. Why? I don't !@#$% know.

On restart, run the 'Archicad 8.1 Library Updater'. This puts a fresh, updated Archicad Library PLA in your local Archicad folder, its default location. More on this in a moment.

Launch Archicad. Recoil in horror at its default appearance. Quit.

Go to /Library/Preferences/Graphisoft. In there you will see folders for each version of AC8. COPY (hold down option) the prefs from the v1 folder to the v2 folder. Make sure you didn't just move them. This returns everything to normal except the keyboard shortcuts.

You must copy the keyboard shortcuts from the onion. The file is Archicad 8.1 Lasting.prefs, located at Archicad Program Files/Good Archicad Prefs/Graphisoft/AC 8.1.0 v2. Copy them to the preferences location above.

Launch Archicad and it should look familiar.

In the Library Manager, on the right, remove the (2) Archicad Library items. On the left, navigate to your Local HD/Applications/Archicad 8.1 Folder. Select the Archicad 8.1 library and add it. The Local Copy box should be checked as usual under 'Library Cache Settings'.

So: The R&D and Project libraries are loaded from the carrot. The Archicad Library is loaded locally. Why: The old Archicad Library is incompatible with the new version. And vice-versa, I assume, but I'm not waiting to find out. So when one of us updates the carrot Archicad library, it risks causing problems for the people who haven't updated yet. The alternative is for everyone to update at once. Ha.

There have been isolated reports of cache library problems. Be on the lookout. If you notice weird library behavior, especially in PM, stop using the cache library and see if it improves. Note: you should still load the Archicad library locally.

Let me know if you have any trouble.