Dealing with older Vectorworks files

[HP Sauce]

I find it a bit annoying that V12 can't export at anything lower than V9, nor import drawings earlier than V8. This forces us into keeping multiple copies of Vectorworks and being forced into using Classic at times.

[Guest]

VW 12 can export back to VW 9 and import MC 7 and newer files. Most of the older versions of VW are not compatible with modern Operating Systems of which VW 12 is compatible with.

In addition, alot of the modern object types are either not compatible with the earlier versions, making editing impossible, or the object types are simply not exported.

Are there alot of situations where you need to export further back than VW 9?

Edited June 30, 2006 by Katie

[HP Sauce]

Hi Katie,

Yes, we have been a Minicad/Vectorworks-only company since MC6, and thus have a huge collection of Minicad files consisting of many different version types. My point being, whenever we do work for a Client whose drawings were done back in the MC6 days, we have to load up Classic, Vectorworks 8, import, save, then finally load Vectorworks 12.

I realise certain aspects of these drawings may not be exported, but to at least be able to import lines (as most of our MC6 drawings were purely constructed of that) would be a great time saver.

I realise it's not really a big issue, and I wouldn't be surprised if we were entirely alone in this boat, but all the same it'd be nice to be able to import mc6 from 12.

[islandmon]

Perhaps, you can run MC6 in Classic then export file as Vectorscript Text and import script into VW12. This way both MC6 & VW12 can be OSX activated.

[cbaarch]

we found that most of the files older than 10 years old

have very little value. too much has changed and usually not as built drawings anyway.

When we work on such projects we build in the value of reconstructing the drawings in our fee proposals

[KrijnGeevers]

At this moment we're keeping a Windows 98 machine running, only to be able to open (2D) Minicad 6 files, to save them in a newer version, to be able to open them in our latest version.

Isn't there a simple plug-in available to import it directly?

Or is every old-time VW-user keeping an old machine running?

[islandmon]

Too bad that a whole bunch of valuable work product was produced in the Dark Ages before the establishment/implementation of useable universal cross-platform standards like PDF, DXF, DWG.

The price we all must pay for being first outta the digital gate ; )