Does anyone know of a program that will convert 2004-05 .dwg files back to r14 format?
DWGGateway @ http://www.solidworks.com/pages/services/downloads.html Batch Drawing Converter @ http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?siteID=123112&id=4091676
AutoDesk provides a FREE bulk conversion utility to allow you to convert from 2004 to earlier versions like r14, 2000, 2002, etc.... The only kicker is, you must have AutoCAD 2004 installed on the machine that is doing the converting; something about it uses the CAD engine to perform the conversions. I myself used it to convert roughly 35,000 drawing files (as a test) from r14 to 2004 and then back. No problems found and it does this rather quickly.
I too have used the Batch Drawing Converter successfully in ADT 2004. However, I recently started a job at a company where they have ADT 2005. They're still running 2000i on a lot of machines and recently got in some drawings from a client that were in 2005 format. I suggested they download the Batch Converter so they wouldn't have to open all the drawings and then save them back individually to the earlier version. To my annoyance, I found that the program did not recognize 2004 and 2005 formats and refused to perform the conversion. Anyone else notice this? It could be a peculiarity of my machine at work, or a network issue. Marc
