Upgrading Dilemma

[ahawes22]

I don't know if the pandemic is the cause of this, but I've had three old projects that have been on hold for years recently come back to life, and just learned of another one today. This one is the oldest yet, from 2013. Obviously I don't have versions 14, 15, or 16, so I'm not sure what to do. I found another post that said just to upgrade straight to whatever year it will be worked in (so, 2020 for us), and if there are issues to go back a year. My question is, what issues might I encounter if I take that big of an upgrade leap? Will I know what they are right away? Is there anything I can do besides auditing that can help with maintenance? 

[barthbradley]

Just upgrade it. If it fails, what's the harm?  If it fails to upgrade everything, what's the harm?  The way I see it, the only other choice you have is to start the project from scratch.  Am I wrong? 

[syman2000]

Recently we had one user that have issue with one of their old file from Revit 2013. Sadly the upgrade stall the process stating the stair cannot be fixed and the upgrade failed. Revit 2017-2021 failed to upgrade the file. Fortunately one user still have Revit 2015 and able to upgrade. I don't know how widespread the issue. It is almost feel like you must have a legacy machine with previous version of Revit incase these issue will become a huge problem for future release.

[ennujozlagam]

The other way is to install those older trial versions of Revit good for one month (if they are still available on Autodesk website? if I'm not mistaken, you can download 5 versions back from the latest versions?) you will be able to open each version to upgrade? Just saying thanks

[ahawes22]

I would hate to have this project start from scratch, because it's a renovation of the older project. And since we already have the model, I think the deadlines were set based on the expectation we could just jump in and go. It's a pretty big model, I don't know how long it would take to re-create!

[ahawes22]

Yeah, unfortunately trying to upgrade straight to 2020 didn't work. I went back to 2017 which is the oldest I have on my machine, and that didn't work either. I'm checking to see if anyone has any older versions, but what a shame that Autodesk doesn't have a better way!

[ahawes22]

Great idea! However, I just checked and don't see any trial versions that go back far enough!

[barthbradley]

Did you purchase Revit through a Reseller? If so, contact your Reseller.  Our Reseller, CAD Masters, helped us a few ago to upgrade an old Project.  Free of charge too, as I remember.  

[ahawes22]

I actually just learned this was an option as well! Good to know, for sure. Thanks!

[ahawes22 · Accepted solution]

Just want to update in case anyone has a similar issue down the road. Using eTransmit took forever, but was able to successfully upgrade from 2013 to 2020!