Using a VERY old CA plan in X7


Ikedcr
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Greetings,
 
I drew a plan in 2002, in Chief 6.0 give or take a version.  Now the same customer wants a garage addition added on to the home.  I successfully opened the old plan in X7 but of course lots of objects and materials are not there. There also look to be a few height and terrain issues but at quick glance they look pretty minor. I have very limited need - or really no need -  to have anything show on the interior.
 
I probably know the answer to the question but am looking for the easy way out......Should I use this old plan in X7 or will I be forever haunted?  Opinions?
 
I attached an exterior view of what it looks like opened in X7.
 
Ike

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I use old plans all the time for stock and reuse, etc.  My experience is that the time it takes to update some items to the latest version is much faster then working on the old plan and definitely faster then starting over.  This is due to all the new and great tools of X7 compared to the old version, and many of my templates including latest codes and details are in the new version as well, and even just losing time in remember how the old version does things. With importing layer sets and defaults, it is usually just some line weight and some other defaults that need updated.  Maybe 30 minutes of getting it up and going to the latest version.

 

Hope that helps.

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No , both for me. For me That's too much of a difference when you could re-draw all the walls in 30 min. Maybe an hour later, its all new.

 

But why not just use your new layouts with the existing plan, you could save that 30 minutes.  What am i missing?  For me, the existing building, elevations, dimensions, foundation, dimensions, annotations are done and easy to show 'as-built' and 'demo' conditions, and simply update/change the existing plan to what is needed.  Then I would just use my new layouts for the latest codes.  My number of pages have also increased significantly from that long ago, but it's still worth keeping the original model that is done, and use new layouts.  Just curious your process, thanks if there is a better way.

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I think if I was moving from X5 to X7 with a plan I would use the same file.  However I did this just recently and the plan file was slower, but it was a good decision for my case.

 

This guy is talking about going from v.6 to v. X7,  isn't that 11 versions ago?  I didn't know they had roofs back then.  If my old file was 11 version old,  I think I would start over.

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I hope we can agree there's no right way to do this. I'm an experimenter and like to see what the problems really are before trying to solve them, others are more comfortable just doing the plan over - pick your poison. Curious about the outcome.

 

Here's an idea - post the old plan. Would LOVE to see how the older plan behaves in X7.

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I think if I was moving from X5 to X7 with a plan I would use the same file.  However I did this just recently and the plan file was slower, but it was a good decision for my case.

 

This guy is talking about going from v.6 to v. X7,  isn't that 11 versions ago?  I didn't know they had roofs back then.  If my old file was 11 version old,  I think I would start over.

Yes, I always like to have a clean model, everything else goes very smooth. It's worth it for me.

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Thanks for the replies and advice, much appreciated.  Since I am a take the easy road kind of guy - and some thought it would work -  I tried using the old plan in X7.  It took 30 minutes to update exterior materials and get a couple of heights corrected.  I now have a 2 story garage/shop addition added on and so far everything I am working on and looking at acts normal and works quickly.  I actually can't tell any difference between this plan and a newly created one......so far.  I have a couple hours left to finish the first version of the plan but I believe it is going to be just fine.

 

Out of curiosity I went inside and fixed up the kitchen materials and ray traced it.  Zero issues other than the fact that what I expect out of materials, lighting and shadowing on a ray trace today is a LOT LOT more than what looked great to me 13 years ago. 

 

Thanks Again to all who helped me with advice.

 

Ike

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OK.  The plan is done and to a large degree it was successful and a time saver.  For whatever reason some of inputs took slightly longer to complete than a new plan created in X7.  The most noticeable one was placing new walls, maybe a second or two longer to show up on the plan than normal. However, this was a pretty simple two story garage/shop addition without a lot of walls so no biggee. 

 

The one thing that was a bit of a puzzle was getting floor zero and floor one to meet, the heights just did not want to work right but after a few minutes I forced it to work right.  At first as I made a change in those heights I got an error code. (See Attachment)  I looked up the code and it says something like "no information on this error".  I would close the message and move on normally without issues...and, I closed the plan and reopened and never got the code again.

 

All-in-all it was a time saver for sure and worked well being that I pulled in a 13 year old plan.  I was happy.  But, the addition design was simple with little needed on the interior and no changes needed on the biggest most complicated parts of the original plan, so it seemed worth taking a chance on.  Given the couple of idiosyncrasies I experienced I would not take a chance on this plan if I needed to invest serious time in the design, I would for sure create a new ground up plan in X7.

 

Cheers,

 

Ike

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