Solid Edge Determine AutoCAD file version without AutoCAD

When importing an AutoCAD file in to Solid Edge, sometimes that import may be unsuccessful.

One cause of an unsuccessful AutoCAD file import is because of a mismatch of the AutoCAD file version to the version of AutoCAD that Solid Edge supports opening  e.g. Solid Edge ST9 does not support opening  AutoCAD 2018 files.

So how to determine the version of the AutoCAD file that you are trying to open in Solid Edge when you do not AutoCAD available to you?

Solution

Open the AutoCAD .dwg file in to a text editor tool.

At the start of the file will be a string that indicates the AutoCAD file version e.g. AC1032:


You can then cross reference this version string to the AutoCAD version name e.g. AC1032 -> AutoCAD 2018:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.dwg

Hardware/Software Configuration

Platform: INTL64
OS: windows
OS Version: 1064
Product: SOLID_EDGE
Application: TRANSLATORS
Version: V220.0
Function: AUTOCAD

Ref: 002-8015095