Opening a TBC v5.4 Project File in an Older Version of TBC

Sometimes you may receive a Project File from us or you may have created a Project in eg v5.70 but for some reason you need to open it in e.g. 5.4.x, 5.5.x or 5.6.x of TBC. The challenge with this is that as TBC develops as a product, it adds capabilities to the software that were not available in an older version of the software. In these situations there may be objects in the TBC Project from eg 5.7 that were not even possible in the earlier versions of the software.

The error you will see when this happens is as follows

There is a work around to this that allows you to “downgrade” a project file to an older version. The downgrade process will remove the project elements that were not supported in the older version. Recent examples of version incompatibilities include

  • Plan View Screen Rotation
  • Reference Files
  • Sub Templates in Corridors
  • Vector Point Snaps in PDF Files

The backdoor can be done in one of two ways

When you have no project open:
Find the VCE file for the project that you want to open
Hold the CTRL and SHIFT key down and hold them down while you drag and drop the VCE file into TBC. Drop the file on the Tab that says Start Page in the Top Left corner of the graphics area.

When you have a project open:
Save the project because the process below will close the current project and open the one that you are downgrading
Find the VCE file for the project that you want to open
Hold the CTRL and SHIFT key down and hold them down while you drag and drop the VCE file into TBC. Drop the file on the Tab that says Plan View in the Top Left corner of the graphics area.

Hope that this helps

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Alan would you happen to know if 5.5 changed this, the process seems to not be working dragging a 5.5 version into a 5.4 version?