I include dwg in several AutoCAD tips/tutorial posts. So you can try it by your self without drawing it from scratch. But I just realize that you might not using the same version as me. You might not be able to open the dwg. But don’t worry, you still can use it!
AutoCAD 2010 is the first version of AutoCAD R.18. So if you use older version, you can’t open it.
Version vs Release
First, let’s take a look to DWG file version.
You will see AutoCAD 2007, 2004, 2000, and R14. Where’s the rest of it? Where’s my 2009, 2008?
Well, after R14 Autodesk looks like want to change the application name. Not using release anymore, but using version. AutoCAD 2000, actually is the first version of R.15. That’s why you don’t see 2000i, 2002 (I can’t recall if there’s any 2001 and 2003, am I right?). They are using the same file format.
But in the next release, the file format changed again. It’s a 3 years cycle. 2004, 2005, and 2006 is the same file format, R. 16.
So if you use AutoCAD 2008, you know which version you should ‘save as’ to… right?
DWG TrueView
TrueView is a FREE (we all like free, aren’t we?) application you can download from Autodesk site. It’s actually a DWG viewer. You can open any DWG files with it. But you should know that you can use TrueView to save a file back to older version. To beauty of TrueView for me, you can batch convert all files in a folder.
If you have older version and can’t open a DWG, you can use TrueView to convert files you receive to your owned version. You just need to download it here: http://autodesk.com/dwg
So don’t worry if you don’t have new version of AutoCAD. You can convert all files here to your DWG version!
About Edwin Prakoso
