Switching backwards from 2004 to 2002

[jocaan]

I am a student at the local community college. I am in the introductory AutoCAD course. To help myself along I purchased a book that has a 30 day trial version of AutoCAD 2004 so I can do work at home on my computer. I took an exercise we are doing in class on 2002 back home on my floppy and worked with the exercise on the 2004 version. When I took the floppy back to school and tried to pick up where I left off at home the revised program was not accepted. Is there a way I can be able to work continually at home or in class on my projects? I don't know if any type of special permissions are necessary. I have no problem with asking the instructor for advice but I'm at home now and do not have a class until next week-I forgot to ask at the class yesterday.
TIA, Frank C.

[gcp310]

Try Tools>Options>Open & Save Tab>File Saveas and set this to autocad2000

G

[jocaan]

Thanks for the help. I'll follow your directions as soon as I can.
Frank C.

[Kate M]

Just for some background: The file structure of 2004 drawings is different from previous releases, so drawings saved in 2004 format can't be read by earlier versions. As gcp310 said, setting your home computer to "save as 2000" will solve this problem.

Feel free to come back with any more questions. :-)

[Paul Sweet]

I have a similar problem. Recently I got a new computer and Architectural Desktop 2004. We don't do much design work, so ADT is overkill, and a lot of our work is with consultants who use older versions of AutoCAD. Somewhere I read that ADT 2004 couldn't be configured to save back to earlier versions (although it was possible to export to ACAD 2000), but plain ACAD 2004 could be configured to save as ACAD 2000. I also read about a way to reconfigure the shortcut on my desktop to start ADT 2004 as plain AutoCAD, so I did that. Finally, in Tools - Options - Open & Save tab I set Save as to ACAD 2000 as the default save format.

However, I find that when I open some drawings prepared in ACAD 2000 format, I can't save them back to ACAD 2000. The File-Save As dialog box doesn't give me the option to save as an earlier version, and Export to AutoCAD isn't available on the File menu. I have to save the file in ACAD 2004 format, close it and reopen it, then I can usually export it back to ACAD 2000.

Does anyone have any ideas what might cause Save as ACAD 2000 to behave inconsistently?