Disable Auto convert

[MontySaine]

i have the 2008 student version of Solid works. My school uses 2006. Every time I start a file at school and bring it home to work on it upadtes it to the newer version. Then when I go back to school it will no longer read it because it is a newer version file.

Is there a way to disable this feature in the newer version so I can move files back and forth?

[JD Mather]

No.
Your only option is STEP or one of the other neutral file formats - which of course will cause you to loose the feature history. You could use feature recognition to rebuild the feature tree but it would be a bit of work and might not work for every feature.

[MontySaine]

Let me get this straight. If I have a company that has say ten licenses, and then say a year or so later I add 10 more but what they then sell is a newer version, I have half my labor force incompatible with the other half because Solidworks has no mode to allow the two half's to work together? Is solidworks really that lame? Do they really care that little for thier customers? AutoCAD has supported older versions for quite some time, I really can't believe Solidworks is that narrow minded. A good program made useless....

[Lazer]

Like JD said, step file and feature recon is the best way to do it, a nightmare but we learn to live with it, you will find most midrange 3d programs have the same problem.

Could be worse, if you use Catia, to step the file out you have to pay thousands just for the plugin required to do it.