Working on Central Models between two different versions

[ggannon8YAYH]

I intern at a company where the computers have different versions of Revit. When I try to open a 2020 model on a computer with 2022, I get a scary long message. It says that when the model is upgraded, the changes from the existing local file will be lost, and to avoid this, they must be synchronized with the central using the previous version of Revit. Once I do that, I can save the upgraded Central model. That sounds very confusing, and I first just want to know if there is a work around? Or does this mean, to work on the same central model, all the computers need to run on the same version? 

[Yien_Chao · Accepted solution]

does this mean, to work on the same central model, all the computers need to run on the same version? 

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EXACT.

[barthbradley · Accepted solution]

If you see Revit is upgrading (maybe you double-clicked on the RVT File in Windows) then simply cancel, open a session of Revit that the RVT was created in and use File=>Open to open the RVT in that version/session.   

BTW: Revit is not backwards-compatible. Are you aware of this?  

[RobDraw · Accepted solution]

When working on Revit projects, one has to use the correct version. Upgrading a project can make a model unusable for the project and might make your teammates very upset because it cannot be changed back to the earlier version. Once upgraded, it could make it unusable for the project because the version may be part of the requirements.

[AlannaYoung]

Just to verify, is this true between minor updates? If I'm using Revit 2022 and my coworker is using Revit22.2, will we have an issue? I haven't been able to find any specific answer. Because it doesn't show the 'upgrading' menu, I don't think there's a problem, but I thought I'd reach out, just in case.

Thanks!

[RobDraw]

Yes, being on different builds can cause issues. It's not guaranteed that issues will arise but they can.

[HVAC-Novice]

I bet the official recommendation is to everyone have the latest update installed. Not only to avoid incompatibilities, but also to have bugs fixed. Autodesk publishes those updates for a reason. Many of the reasons are not necessarily documented. 

It probably works if not everyone has the same patches installed, but do so at your own risk. and if you have an issue, even if unrelated to this, you want to be updated on all team members just so you know you can exclude that as a possibility that is causing issues. 

And yes, the team has to have a plan or policy so that everyone upgrades at the same time. 

Here why it is not possible to save to older versions. It is not a conspiracy as some people think.

https://revitlink.blogspot.com/2017/05/why-is-revit-not-backwards-compatible.html

[AlannaYoung]

Thank you so much! That was a lot of really great information to give back to my firm!

🙂

[RobDraw]

You're welcome.