Bacward compatibilty

[IanMatthews]

I've just discovered that Revit 2009 is not backward compatible to 2008. Our IT department is convinced that implementation is going to take 8 weeks, which is not such a problem at the moment, as we haven't formally started using Revit on any projects as yet.

However, 12 months down the track when version 2010 comes out, what happens when an architect upgrades immediately to the new version? We wouold have to stop work until we rollled the same version out.

Anyone having this problem now? And is Autodesk considering making 2010 backward compatible, or is there something inherant in the software thhat makes this impossible?

[Anonymous]

Revit has never been backward compatible, and probably never will be. All
parties working on a project must communicate and either all upgrade at the
same time, or stay on the same versions until the project is done.

wrote in message news:5916351@discussion.autodesk.com...
I've just discovered that Revit 2009 is not backward compatible to 2008. Our
IT department is convinced that implementation is going to take 8 weeks,
which is not such a problem at the moment, as we haven't formally started
using Revit on any projects as yet.

However, 12 months down the track when version 2010 comes out, what happens
when an architect upgrades immediately to the new version? We wouold have to
stop work until we rollled the same version out.

Anyone having this problem now? And is Autodesk considering making 2010
backward compatible, or is there something inherant in the software thhat
makes this impossible?

[Scott_Womack]

Each release the information that objects can have may be augmented in ways we do not always "see". Revit would have to reack every one of these to be able to tell what information to leave out of a specific entity if they did make it backward compatible. This is nearly impossible, due to the power of the family editor, which allows us to define our own data to be in those objects. How would revit know about all of this inorder to be backward compatible?

Scott Womack

[cmdguru]

If you get the subscription, which is a necessity for Revit, you can always have older versions of Revit and work on a older project so that coordination between disciplines is possible. ONCE YOU SAVE IN A HIGHER VERSION YOU CANNOT GO BACK. Everyone should be on the same build within a project, which the Project Manager is supposed to keep track of. If your IT department is that slow, why are they not working off of an image from machine to machine?

[IanMatthews]

"If you get the subscription, which is a necessity for Revit, you can always have older versions of Revit and work on a older project so that coordination between disciplines is possible"

That sounds OK as we'll be getting the subscription version. I'd read somewhere that to upgrade Revit, you had to uninstall the 'old' one and then install the new one. That must be the stand-alone version. Slow rolll out is something I'll have to discuss with IT I guess.

[Anonymous]

when you install a newer version, it will find and uninstall the older
version if you'd like.

wrote in message news:5917528@discussion.autodesk.com...
"If you get the subscription, which is a necessity for Revit, you can always
have older versions of Revit and work on a older project so that
coordination between disciplines is possible"

That sounds OK as we'll be getting the subscription version. I'd read
somewhere that to upgrade Revit, you had to uninstall the 'old' one and then
install the new one. That must be the stand-alone version. Slow rolll out is
something I'll have to discuss with IT I guess.

[cmdguru]

with the subscription service you can use the same license on the different versions of Revit, when coordinating with other consultants, you should agree on a version to use and stick with it, hopefully it will be the latest. As far as uninstall reinstall issues, that is more of an issue between builds, no auto-update. This shouldn't affect you with multiple versions unless your computer doesn't have the space and you have no need to regress to an early version to fit a consultants need.

[Anonymous]

8 weeks? No way...... We just upgraded yesterday, and here's how it went for us:

Tuesday morning: Create the deployment images from the installation discs. Architecture, Structure & MEP. All 3 Revit flavors well before lunchtime.

Wednesday morning: IT guy set up GPO policy for the packages for deployment to the different disciplines. He tested the deployment on his computer to verify it went fine.

Wednesday Evening: Remote into user's computers to uninstall 2008 version, reboot, allow the server to take over to install the appropriate version of 2009. This step was only necessary because we had a bunch of manual installs for our pilot projects. In the future, all upgrades will be automatic from the server via group policy.

Thursday morning: Now that everyone has been upgraded, I moved all NEW content to the server. Our custom content was easily upgraded to the 2009 format via the batch utility that came with the installation disc.

So, overall it was something like 48 hours. If that was the only thing the 2 of us had to deal with, it could have easily been done all in a single day.

On the other hand, if this was Architectural Desktop and/or Building Systems, then the 8 weeks would sound about right.


Michael