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Help! Saving to prior release???

Help! Saving to prior release???

Help! Saving to prior release???

(OP)
background: I have solidworks 2004 at home and at the college I teach at. I also teach at a high school where we just got a copy of 2005 personal edition.

SO heres my dilemma: I opened some files from my college class [2004] to show some of my high schoolers [on 2005] and solidworks converted them to the later version so now I cant open them in 2004 for my college class (which is tonite). I've looked all over to try and find a way to save the files as an earlier release or export them to some other format that 2004 will understand but havent had any luck. Can someone make a recommendation on this?

RE: Help! Saving to prior release???

There's not much you can do if you need the feature history.  You can save as some dumb solid to get the shape, but that's about it.

RE: Help! Saving to prior release???

If the parts aren't too complicated, you could use FeatureWorks to recreate the feature history.

RE: Help! Saving to prior release???

I recommend you make a copy of all files before converting them to future versions.  There's no way to restore a "future version" back to its original state.

Jeff Mowry
www.industrialdesignhaus.com
Reason trumps all.  And awe trumps reason.

RE: Help! Saving to prior release???

What would you say the reasoning behind NOT being backward compatible would be?
Forced to upgrade?
I dont quite understand it.

Adam
Solidworks 2005 SP01.1
Windows 2000

RE: Help! Saving to prior release???

Have you checked to see if there was a backup copy made? If you have your settings set to make a backup copy you should be able to use that.

RE: Help! Saving to prior release???

ParaCAD,
There are very valid reasons for not being backward compatible.  Do a search on this forum and on the UG forum, and you will find several threads regarding this.  One of the primary reasons is a previous version has no way to interpret any new features or additions created in the newer release.  I really don't think this is some kind of conspiracy to force us to upgrade, and I believe that this problem is present in most midrange and all high range CAD packages.

RE: Help! Saving to prior release???

Issue discussed to death... run a search at www.google.com as well

My opinion is because not to force users to upgrade, but because of new features not being covered by older versions.

I can't imagine makeing a Deformed or flex feature and then sending it back to an old version of SW... how would it figure it out... espeically if you send a Multi-body part back to a version of SW, when Multi-body was nto supported.

My .02 worth,

Scott Baugh, CSWP
www.scottjbaugh.com
FAQ731-376

RE: Help! Saving to prior release???

I agree with Scott. That is the reason you can't save back to older versions.

Chris
Systems Analyst, I.S.
SolidWorks Pro 06/PDMWorks 06
AutoCAD 06
ctopher's home site (updated 06-21-05)
FAQ559-1100
FAQ559-716

RE: Help! Saving to prior release???

Right--this isn't a Word document or a mere collection of lines like ACAD.  Even if you didn't make parts with these features, the format is saved differently between versions (apparently).

I think rporter has your only possible solution if you hosed over your files.

Jeff Mowry
www.industrialdesignhaus.com
Reason trumps all.  And awe trumps reason.

RE: Help! Saving to prior release???

(OP)
Thanks for the replies everyone. heres the update: When I got to the classroom last night I was relieved to find that I had only modified the assembly to 2005, the individual parts were still in 2004 format so all I had to do was remake the assembly (which is what we were doing in the class anyway). So all was not lost.

I can understand some of the arguements for not being backwards compatible but after 14 years of using AutoCAD and still being relatively new to solidworks it just never occurred to me that this would be an issue.

Lesson learned. Thanks again guys!

RE: Help! Saving to prior release???

Teachme3D - Then Autodesk was successful in their brainwashing you to believe that the entire world could be backwards compatible if they used ACAD.  Reminds me of a sick sci-fi flick.

If you're relatively new to SWx what are you teaching your students?  Hang out here you will learn a lot.

pop quiz tomorrow

Best Regards,

Heckler
Sr. Mechanical Engineer
SW2005 SP 5.0 & Pro/E 2001
Dell Precision 370
P4 3.6 GHz, 1GB RAM
XP Pro SP2.0
NVIDIA Quadro FX 1400
      o
  _`\(,_
(_)/ (_)

Never argue with an idiot. They'll bring you down to their level and beat you with experience every time.

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