topic Re: Indentifying and updating old EAGLE files... in EAGLE Forum

Indentifying and updating old EAGLE files...

Anonymous — Sun, 22 Jan 2017 06:41:17 GMT

So it turns out that I have a bunch of very old EAGLE board and schematic files that are not readable with the current (7.x) version of EAGLE.

I get a message:

Eagle for Mac OS X can't update file ' ... .sch' (data structure is older than version 4.11)

That's fine. I figure that I can copy those files to a PC (or PC VM), read them with an older version of EAGLE (4.16 or 5.x), and save them in a newer format. And I should do this while the older versions of EAGLE are still available...

So the question is, how can Identify which EAGLE files need this treatment. With the modern XML format, the EAGLE version used to create them is obvious, but not so for the pre-XML versions. And the current EAGLE CAN read things from the pre-xml days, just not really old things...

I suspect that the version number (EAGLE program, or just data structure version) is stored within the old file formats as well - can Cadsoft document "just enough" of those old file formats to identify the version ?

Thanks

WestfW

Re: Indentifying and updating old EAGLE files...

jorge_garcia — Mon, 23 Jan 2017 19:48:09 GMT

Hello westfw,

Those old versions aren't modified any more, they are archived for the benefit of our users. The best way to find out which files might need to go through the windows treatment is to just try to open them in V7 or newer. Whichever files show this error will have to go through windows.

Newer files (anything newer than V4.11) will just open fine, so I have to imagine that only a small subset of your files will have issues.

Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you.

Best Regards,

Re: Indentifying and updating old EAGLE files...

Anonymous — Wed, 25 Jan 2017 10:51:25 GMT

I guess. I have nearly 1000 designs (many of which are minor variations of one another), so i was hoping for someway to find the old files without having to manually look at each one...

Re: Indentifying and updating old EAGLE files...

edwin.robledo — Wed, 25 Jan 2017 11:53:37 GMT

Hi westfw,

As you have already stated, earlier version of EAGLE were using a binary file format, for then there is no way to identify the file until it you try to open it :(.

I personally suggest opening the files using your VM PC, that way all files will load and will make browsing a bit easier until you find the design versions you are looking for. Save the needed file or files in the new format (XML), then edit on your Mac.

I hope this helps.