OpenRoads Error Newer Civil Data Found

I too, concur with Ray's thoughts. I will add another consideration, by the end of the day, I will have worked with at least 5 agencies/organizations in the last two weeks, and have three new organizations in the pipeline for the coming weeks. I can't uninstall/reinstall each time I change tasks to match a given version. This was a HUGE strength of the DGN and Bentley's approach for years, if I was on the same generation of product, I rarely had issue between versions. The move to the "Open" platforms, that was, in part as I understand it, to facilitate data sharing between disciplines through the common DGN format now doesn't work with a the same software released 3 months ago in the SAME discipline. Since, again as Ray indicates, the tools are incomplete, the evolution of the format seems primed to continue as we get to a fully featured ORD. Clearly "preaching to the choir" here, but I am not sure of any other mechanism to communicate these concerns to Bentley, although I do fear they may fall on deaf ears. 

The Ditko dude ditto's Ray's sentiment. These are interesting times to say the least.

This is a significant flaw of Bentley's development of the OpenRoads tools.  It has been a beef of mine for some time.  I have yet to understand Bentley's abandonment of mature, fully capable civil tools (SS2, all flavors) in favor of tools that are not ready for production work.  It's not that the OpenRoads tools will not be capable or productive; it's that they have yet to get there.

Bentley's stock response is to update to the latest version.  That's simply not an option within large organizations with dozens, or hundreds, of users.  Those organizations need to confirm with every update that the new version is compatible with all of the other software and security policies within the organization.  That can sometimes take months.  Quarterly updates are not going to happen.

It is not always true that backwards compatibility is broken with every update.  There was a break between 10.03 and 10.04 which I experienced. I was not aware of  another break between 4 and 5, so I suspect you are experiencing the break which actually occurred at 10.04. I think (could be wrong) that 10.04 will open the file in question.

As noted, the solution is to migrate to a newer version. Of course, this is not always a simple decision considering you may have clients which each demand different versions.

This specific example is due to OpenRoads part of the product. Other CONNECT products may have different practices.

And none of them can be opened by an earlier version? That's going to leave a mess when trying to share files between different partners, clients, etc...

It's one thing if older software can't read the newer product. It's another level of confusion when you can't save the newer product backward for the older software to read. That's bad.