Purpose and locations of the Archicad and PlotMaker preferences, and why you care.
Preferences are responsible for all application behavior that isn't in the application itself, or in the current file. All applications have preferences. Prefs for short.
Prefs sometimes become corrupt, causing weird application behavior. The solution to a lot of application problems is 'Delete the preferences.' The application rebuilds the default prefs by itself.
In Archicad and PlotMaker, the prefs retain all the user customizations set in Options|Preferences. This includes, most critically, the keyboard shortcuts. Our shortcuts are substantially modified from the Archicad & PM defaults, and resetting them by hand is an occasion for great swearing. In Archicad 8, the prefs also maintain the Info Box customizations, the resetting by hand of which is an occasion for throwing things, plus the swearing.
Whenever you install, reinstall, or update Archicad & PM, preserve your prefs by copying them somewhere. Then they can be reinstated and everything should be normal.
In case you have to delete your prefs as a troubleshooting tactic, we keep a backup of good prefs at 2 CAD Resources:AC Program Files: Good Archicad Prefs.
In OS X, your preferences are located at [home]:Library:Preferences.
In Archicad 7, there are 3 preference files for Archicad and 4 for PlotMaker. They are located at the top of your Preferences folder. Additionally, there is an Archicad prefs file for each Teamwork project you have ever signed into. These files are named with your sign-in name and the Project name.
- Archicad 7.0 Basic.Prefs
- Archicad 7.0 DialPos.Prefs
- Archicad 7.0 Lasting.Prefs
- PlotMaker 2.3 Lasting.Prefs
- PlotMaker 2.3 v2 USA Prefs
- PlotMaker DialPos Prefs
- Plotter Prefs
- [User][Project].prefs, etc.
Moldy-oldy prefs from ancient Teamwork projects may be deleted. (Salamander! How long ago did we...oh.)
In Archicad 8, the prefs are much better organized. Within your Preferences folder there is a folder called 'Graphisoft.' Here are all the prefs for Archicad & PM. Each update of Archicad & PM (v#) has its own folder. This means that when updating Archicad & PM, you must copy the files from the old versions' folders to the new.