AD Files – Backwards Compatible?

[Chris56000]

Hi!

Just a quickie one!

Are Altium/Protel  SchDoc and PCBDoc files backwards compatible to orler versions ?

I was emailed some relatively simple files for a Curve Tracer project done in AD 18 and wonder if a very old copy of AD 6 would open them ?

Chris Williams

[tszaboo]

Somewhat. I've opened files that were +/- 2 versions apart.
More than 10... maybe. I mean, they've added new functionality.

Just try opening it, I guess.

[T3sl4co1l]

Going back that far, you may need it saved specifically in binary 4.0 or ASCII format.  The files are generally compatible between versions of AD, with new or dropped features simply being ignored when unsupported.

Tim

[ajawamnet]

I have opened AD21 files in Ad6.9. If I export to AD pcb ver4, i can get them into Protell99SE...

Attached is screenshot of a PCB saved in AD20 or 21 and opened in Ad6.9

You lose things like multiline text, tuning elements (depending on what created it or last saved it)   - even the new layerstack manager calculated impedances come across as static rules - pretty cool. See our host's comments on that:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/altium/a365/msg3189118/#msg3189118

"Yes, Altium Designer is brilliant at forward and backward file compatibility. Even using hundreds of different internal daily build versions (the hardware group were supposed to use the latest internal daily build for real designs) with all sorts of experimental features, not once did the file system ever break.'"

There's three things that Altium has going for it.

1- backward compatibility as much as possible
2 - a simple license scheme that DOES NOT LOCK to a specific machine
3 - you can have a zillion independent installs of various versions on the same machine - even different point versions of the same major version (ie AD20.2.5 and AD20.0.7)