Opening AC Electrical 2008 Drawings with AutoCad LT 2004

[Anonymous]

Does anyone know if it should be possible to open AutoCad Electrical 2008 drawings in AutoCad LT 2004? I have tried several times to open them and cannot find any settings in AC Lt that seem to help. Any suggestions that don't involve buying new software would be appreciated.

Thanks

Albie Bell

[dougmcalexander]

AutoCAD 2004 LT will have no converter for 2008 files. You need to get the person who sent the version 2008 files to convert them to 2004 format. They can perform a Save-As for each file and set the type to version 2004, or they can go to Options and set their default file save format to 2004, so all files are saved in the 2004 format from now on.

Note: Any drawing entitities or features that are unique to versions 2005-2008 will be lost when saving back to version 2004. Also note that you can only view and edit as dumb files with LT or even with Vanilla AutoCAD. The only data you can see/modify is the text stored in the attribute values. You can change wires to a different layer by using the standard AutoCAD layer properties, but that would be futile since you cannot generate a wire from/to list unless you have AutoCAD Electrical. Everything is manual with LT or AutoCAD. But if all you want to be able to do is view and print, you will be fine, once the files are saved back to version 2004 format.

[Anonymous]

Thanks!