Expert: Bob - 9/18/2006

Question
I am a Job Captain in the Architecture profession and I am having trouble with converting 2007 files to 2002.  I have a consultant sending Acad drawings, built in '07 but saved down to '00, that will not open on '02 or '06 - a window pops up that says "drawing file is not valid." The problem is not consistent across all dwg files the consultant has sent, some can be opened with no problems.  I'm not sure if the file was somehow corrupted.  I communicated this to the consultant, who tried all the usual audit, purge, etc., tricks and dropped the file on our ftp site instead of emailing it - same result.  Suggestions for solutions?  Thanks.

Answer
No doubt there has been some controversy with collaboration on 2007, mainly with the vertical applications like ADT,not plain AutoCAD, from what I read.
Why don't you have them just saveas 2004 format, you open it on your 2006 machine, save as 2000 format, see if that helps.
If he does not have 2006 or earlier to open it, how can he tell he has not messed it up in some way?
Why does he feel it is OK to use 2007 without making sure what you need? -- well, maybe Autodesk said so.
Are you SURE he is not using ADT or Land Desktop, or ???? --you did not say what kind of consultant. It could be that some files have components of a vertical or add-on program that are not degrading well, others have none of those items.
If he is the consultant, unless he is very greatly in demand and can dictate, HE should be on the Autodesk Discussion Groups asking why HE can't give you good files, not sloughing off the problem on you.  (Although I would rather you were not 5 yr old software working through 2 format changes).
Hope this helps.


BOB