Has anyone been able to get BricsCAD V21 working on macOS Sonoma?

Rlampo

I have a permanent license for BricsCAD V21 and after updating to macOS Sonoma it crashes immediately every time I launch it. Is this the experience that everyone else is getting?

I followed the steps for a clean install from this article but saw no success. Does anyone have any recommendations to get up and running again?

Thank you in advance for your help!

Michael Mayer

No more sure but AFAIR V22 was the oldest Bricscad I had when I switched to Sonoma Public Beta in July.
I am not even sure if I ever used/tested V22 with Sonoma. I was on V23.

I did not notice more App/Software issues with Sonoma in general.
So if V21 ran OK with macOS 13, there may be chances to get it running.

But AFAIR V22 and earlier had a lot of crashes on Mac in general.
Like just opening a file or closing the App froze Bricscad or when multi-threading enabled
and such things. V23 for me feels now reasonable stable and reliable on my M1 Mac.

Rlampo

Thank you for your reply, Michael. I wonder if there is a way to get V21 working on Sonoma. I am a one-man shop in a 3rd world country so paying for a new license every year is very costly for me. I'm going to try formatting my Mac and going back to an older version of macOS. I need this to work, because it's blocking me from working on my projects. Thank you!

Michael Mayer

What was your last macOS that worked with V22 ?

AFAIR Catalina was the biggest hurdle deactivating 32 bit Apps.
I left that out as there were no features I would need.
Was the next Mojave where I upgraded (?) but it did not only
deactivate 32 bit Apps but more annoying that it made nearly
all my drivers for input devices, printers, scanners, .... obsolete.

I think Big Sur had again larger support issues (KEXTs deprecated ?)
And no more sure about the latest macOSs.

I think as a rule of thumb, about every 3 years, macOS versions do
larger changes with larger impacts, while the next upgrades have
only minor issues.

And I think that macOS 13 to 14 was one of the less problematic upgrades.

I think Windows, at least in the past, was far more reliable in supporting
older Apps in current OS versions. But I honestly prefer macOS.
And if I had to leave macOS, I would prefer Linux.

But great to hear that Apple is also used in 3rd world countries.

Rlampo

Michael Mayer said:

What was your last macOS that worked with V22 ?

And I think that macOS 13 to 14 was one of the less problematic upgrades.

That's what I've heard. I was running Ventura (macOS 13) until a few days ago and V21 was working fine there.

I believe (but cannot confirm it now) that V21 worked for a couple of days in Sonoma until it stopped launching. Part of me thinks it should be able to start working again, but I'm not sure what to try after the clean install didn't work.

Do you know someone from Bricsys that could help me figure this out? I wonder if there is a file somewhere else that I need to remove…

Michael Mayer

As far as I read the clean install manual you posted,
I think that is all that needs to be deleted.
App, V21 folder and mainly that hidden "config" file.