- [Lecturer] When it comes time
to open older versions SOLIDWORKS files
the process can be very easy, but you want to be careful.
Let's walk through it right now together.
I'm going to go up to my Open menu
and navigate to a part that I downloaded earlier.
Here you can see that I've got a stainless steel ball valve
that I downloaded as a SOLIDWORKS part
off McMaster-Carr website.
I'm going to go ahead and click Open.
Immediately when opening we can see
that we get a warning across the top
that says Older version file.
This means that unlike 2017 SOLIDWORKS, which I'm using,
this part was created in SOLIDWORKS 2016 or something older.
Let's see what happens when we save this file.
I'm going to click Save and immediately I get a warning here
that says this is an older version file,
and again, it's notifying me that we're going to
be converting it to a 2017 version.
The reason that this warning comes up
is that because once we save this
as a 2017 version file type
those who are using SOLIDWORKS 2016 or older
will have limited capabilities
when it comes to using and editing this file.
For example, a 2016 user will no longer
have the functionality of the Feature Tree.
So you want to be careful when you save this file
and make sure it's the right time to do so
to upgrade it to a new version type.
For this situation I'm going to hit Cancel,
because I want to restore this file
to its native version, 2016, and not upgrade it.
So I'm going to hit Cancel.
Instead I'm going to save it as a new name
so that I can continue working in it in 2017
without affecting the 2016 version.
So I go up to my Save dialog, hit Save As,
and I'm simply going to add a digit to the end
to give it a different name
as though not to overwrite it and hit Save.
Again, my warning comes up
telling me that I'm converting to a 2017 version,
that's okay, I hit Save.
Now you can see that everything's happy,
I've got a 2017 version SOLIDWORKS file
with all the functionality that I had before
here in the Feature Tree.