Backwards Compatibility

[Donald Wardlaw]

I'm standing at the crevice, me, El Cap and VW17 on one side and Mojave and VW19 on the other side.  Many thanks to all the folks who have shed light on the risks of Mojave.  I've concluded that for our hardware it should work fine.  It will allows us to move to VW19, and more importantly, get us back in the loop as far as OS security updates go.

 

I have one more question, though.  I have CAD files going back to Minicad 3.  A portion of my old work, which extends back almost 30 years,  is thus orphaned and out of reach, .  VW17 seems to be able to open files I made 15 or more years ago.

 

What I'd like to know is:  Will the combination of VW19 and Mojave, orphan any files created by a version of VW that is not orphaned by VW17?  Related, is there a chart anywhere that shows what it takes to open files of different versions?  That might be complicated since there are OS and hardware issues also.  

 

It seems that in recent years software developers have done a better job in maintaining access to older file versions than was the case in earlier days.

 

Many thanks,

 

Donald

[PVA - Admin]

19 minutes ago, Donald Wardlaw said:

What I'd like to know is:  Will the combination of VW19 and Mojave, orphan any files created by a version of VW that is not orphaned by VW17?  

No, we intend to maintain the oldest version of file format IMPORT conversion going forward, which is MiniCAD 7. You will be able to File > Export fewer older versions in later versions of Vectorworks, but we intend to keep the import support static. 2019 can open VWX (or MCD) 2017 can and more.

[Gerard Jonker]

In other words, you need a MC7 or, in my experience, VW 8 (not 2008) running as steppingstone between MCD files and current VW versions.

This means running an old Mac with OS9 in a classic environment. An old G3, 1st generation iMac for instance or a G4 (blue front) will do.

 

[Donald Wardlaw]

Lead me to another question....

 

I have versions of VW on our computers going back to 12.5.2.  I deleted on the iMac that and everything up to but not including VW2014, and I saved almost 20G.  Taking into account what Jim said above,

 

Is there any reason to keep a VW folder for any version other than the current version and the last version that was used and worked fine?  I see another 30G waiting for me.

 

Thanks,

 

Donald

[PVA - Admin]

2 minutes ago, Donald Wardlaw said:

Is there any reason to keep a VW folder for any version other than the current version and the last version that was used and worked fine?

The ONLY thing I can think of, is that if you wanted to keep older 3rd party plugins that weren't updated for later versions working and available, otherwise the current and one previous versions are normally all you need.