Hi All,

I was trying to convert a Caesar file from version 2018 to version 2017 by creating a neutral file from version 2018.
When I opened this neutral file in version 2017 and tried to convert this to C-II input file, a message appeared saying" Error processing ELEMENT section, line # 89".
Kindly guide me how to solve this, as this is a big model and remodeling takes additional efforts.

Regards
Sharu

CAESAR II neutral file converter is not forward compatible. But I'm sure you can find a way to tweak the 2018 neutral file into something that CAESAR 2017 can interpret. But you will lose some data since the newer version has new features not found in the older version. And depending on how good you are with computers, it may end up being more time consuming that remodeling everything in 2017.

I suggest that you read the neutral file format description in Section 15 of the User's Guide of both version 2017 and 2018 and get familiar with the formats. There's no quick answer to this.

Actually the neutral file should be forward compatible. Most of the time the neutral file is not backward compatible - because we add more information to the input that older versions can't read and interpret. Trying to go from 2018 (v.10) to 2017 (v.9) is an example where this won't work. In v.10 we added tags (text strings) to elements, restraints, and hangers (in addition to a few other items). This is why you can't take a v.10 neutral file back to an earlier version.

I think my understanding of the definition of forward/backward compatibility is the opposite of yours.

Richard, Faizal

Thanks for your valuable replies.

Hi guys,
here I found something very usefull, I converted a lot of file without any problem

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMPw8_M2EYY

Thanks a lot 🙂🙂🙂