DWG Version

[tom.macmillan]

My supervisor recently retired and I have been given the accountablility of directing our I.T. dept wrt the software in the engineering dept.  The retired supervisor was not interested in using Inventor and denied it to the employees under him.  I would now like to roll out Inventor 2012.  The issue with this is that our viewer tied to our drawing manager was tested with 2011 and I don't want to push out AutoCAD 2012 or further yet.

My question is - Can the the DWG files created by AutoCAD/Inventor 2012 (version 18.2) be read by AutoCAD 2011 (version 18.1)?

Thanks

[JDMather]

You will probably get a better response over here

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/Inventor-General/bd-p/78

[tom.macmillan]

Edited to make it a little clearer.  The question is about AutoCAD reading DWGs in the same format (2010) but a newer version (18.1 vs 18.2).

I don't believe this belongs in the Inventor forum.

Thanks

[JDMather]

I thought you were referring to Inventor dwg files.
I am not sure what Inventor has to do with your question if it was really about

dwg files created in AutoCAD 2012 opening in AutoCAD 2011.

Assuming this is an AutoCAD only question -

I don't recall what releases the file version changed (I don't think there was a change between 2010 to 2012 but a quick search should turn up that information), but in any case the DWGTrue view can be used to save down to earlier dwg release.

Edit:  Looks like a change with 2010 then 2013.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AutoCAD

If the question does include dwg files created by Inventor, then more information is needed.

[pendean]

AutoCAD 'similar' DWG versions:
2013-2014
2010-2011-2012
2007-2008-2009
2004-2005-2006
2000-2000i-2002
14
13
and so on.

Inventor capability is not being answered here.

[tom.macmillan]

It's been a while since I've used Inventor (I think it was 5 or 6) but I assume that you are able to export drawings to a DWG file containing only 2d info, correct?  As if it was created in AutoCAD?  If so, I just want to see if there are any obvious issues with opening this file in the prior release of AutoCAD (same type though).

I've looked on the forum and online and I am aware the file format stays 'similar' for a few releases as pendean mentioned, but I haven't read specifically that it was entirely backwards compatible within the similar releases.

What other info are you requesting?  System - XP, 32 bit;  Product design suite premium and standard

[JDMather]

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@tom.macmillan wrote:

It's been a while since I've used Inventor ... but I assume that you are able to export drawings to a DWG file containing only 2d info, correct? ...

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You can, but there are a couple (several) of different ways to do this and I am not sure if they are both (all) backward compatible.

I don't use dwg from Inventor, but I know there are some considerations you might want to run by the Inventor folks who do send dwg out of Inventor.  Seems to me like there might be some white papers on this at AU.autodesk.com