Prevent saving of older versions

[m4tts1m]

Any advice on preventing old drawings from being "saved-up" to the current version?

 

EG: we work in 2008, but our government client works in 2005. In order to happily co-exist we have some stations with both versions installed, however: we MUST NEVER save 2004 format Land Development files from 2008. If we do, the LD data is upgraded to 2007 (even if we "save-back-down" to 2004). Setting the default save format to 2004 will also "corrupt" the LD data!! Therefor, 2008 must never save a 2004 dwg, but 2004 drawings must remain read/write for LD 2005.

 

Clear as mud?

[tzframpton]

So you have tried setting the default save settings in OPTIONS as 2004 and it doesn't work, correct?

[m4tts1m]

So you have tried setting the default save settings in OPTIONS as 2004 and it doesn't work, correct?

 

Correct. Any attempt at saving from 2007+ will make the LD data unusable for 2005, regardless of what version you save it as. The only recourse we currently have is to "Export to AutoCAD 2004" but this is finicky (crashes if any xrefs, images, or contours, are present). So we have to remove all these, export layerstates and saved views... then Export to AutoCAD 2004, then re-assemble the drawing from 2005. A real pain. If we could just prevent people from unintentionally saving then this would be a non-issue. Ideally the OPTIONS dialog would have a check box () Allow saving of older formats? Alternatively, i've thought that forcing older formats to open read-only would work, but this would require a lot of "unapplied time" - so to speak.