RealDWG 2015 libraries

Hi Michael,

RealDWG 2015 libraries will be included in a next version of MicroStation, which is now available for testing as AEP (Early Access Preview).

As usual (not in Bentley case only ;-), there is not announced fixed release date for this version.

With regards,

 Jan

Thanks, once again, Jan.

You're right on that, Michael - C3D OE 2015 won't install on RealDWG 2014 or any release other than RealDWG 2015. Is there any particular reason why you need C3D OE 2015? Like Chuck has previously pointed out, in recent years Autodesk has made C3D object versions forward/backward compatible therefore there may not be a real need of a version specific object enabler. In theory I'd expect a DWG file created from C3D R2015 to be displayed fine in RealDWG 2014 and causes no problems to C3D R2015 even if the file is saved in RealDWG 2014. I'd be interested in learning issues caused by mismatching versions of C3D objects using RealDWG 2014 or 2016.

That said, we plan to release an update of MicroStation V8i by the end of the year and it will have RealDWG R2016. If you are not ready to upgrade to CONNECT, perhaps you can wait and get the V8i update so you will be able to use C3D OE R2016.

They need to release enablers for their core software. So when AutoCAD 2016 is released, they need 2016 enablers if someone is to open a file needing enablers due to content from one of their vertical products.
In the past, an enabler would actually update the objects to the current version, even if the file was being saved to an earlier release. So not only was it necessary to keep enablers up to date, but you had to make sure no one opened a file in a newer version that was in use of a project. And that meant even if you were in 2007, or 2008 versions of a vertical product, just opening a file and saving it with a 2009 enable installed made that file almost useless for those using 2007 or 2008. Once the objects were in 2009 format, the objects, which often contain live design data were unavailable to users of the 2007 or 2008 version of the software.
We work on many different teams and have had to maintain 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 version available and separate so users could work on different teams requiring different formats. When 2013 came out we assumed we were again getting on a new merry-go-round. But then, 2014 and 2015 were released and the objects were now forward and backward compatible! And then, when 2016 was released, we were told that it continues the compatibility with the three prior versions.
Our current license offers up to 2015 so we are now rolling out new PC's with 2015 while current PC's are using 2013.
One caveat - if new objects are created, the older enablers cannot see them. However we have not been given any list of objects to see if this will impact us.

You have two options at this point: if you can wait, MicroStation SS4 is on its way to be released in perhaps a few weeks. This release will have RealDWG 2016 as the default installation. Alternatively if you need RealDWG 2016 to be run on your existing SS3 products, you can download it from SELECTservices (just search by "RealDWG2016"). We decided not to make an announcement for this release because we anticipated SS4 to be available shortly after the release of RealDWG 2016. If you install RealDWG 2016 and expect it to run on an existing SS3 product, you'd have to manually set MS_REALDWG_VERSION=2016 for that product. Comparing to SS4 it run will RealDWG2016 by default.