Philosophy: Guarantee

Compatibility guarantee and long-term archiving of circuit diagrams / electrical installation plans

The life cycle of machines and systems is usually significantly longer than 10 years. Experience shows that machines and systems are expanded or converted for the first time after 5 to 10 years. In our opinion, it is therefore essential to be able to import and revise archived circuit diagrams in the currently used Treesoft CAD version even after more than 10 years.

compatibility guarantee

Unfortunately, potential customers often fail to recognize the value of the compatibility guarantee offered by Treesoft GmbH & Co. KG, which has been consistently implemented to date, or only recognize it too late. To our knowledge, Treesoft GmbH & Co. KG is the only software provider that offers such a guarantee and actually implements it.

We often hear from prospective customers who use other electrical CAD programs and would like to switch to Treesoft CAD that they are forced to run multiple release versions in parallel because converting to the current version is either impossible or would involve a great deal of effort and associated costs.

Treesoft guarantees

“Treesoft guarantees that when used under the same operating system, all existing data or data created by the customer with the program can also be used with the updates or upgrades sent to them. However, this may require conversion of the customer data, which is then carried out largely automatically using a program supplied with the software.” This is the original wording of our “Terms and Conditions for Software Service Contracts.” However, the services actually provided by Treesoft GmbH & Co. KG go far beyond this. We also transferred all data when switching from the Microsoft DOS operating system to Microsoft Windows 98. Upon request, the article lists used in TreeCAD DOS were converted to the Paradox database.

We have also implemented this compatibility guarantee for the cross-upgrades to new Microsoft operating systems documented below:

• Windows 98 to Windows ME
• Windows ME to Windows 2000
• Windows 2000 to Windows XP 32 and 64 bit
• Windows XP 32 and 64 bit on Windows 7
• Windows 7 to Windows 8 / 8.1
• Windows 8 / 8.1 to Windows 10

As part of the upgrade from TreeCAD 5.9 to Treesoft Office 6.0, we naturally also transferred all data from the Paradox database to the Firebird SQL database. In addition, the current version of Treesoft Office allows you to import drawing files up to TreeCAD version 4.1 (released in 1991) without conversion.

This means we are backward compatible in drawing format for more than 27 years!

Of course, all older drawings can still be updated to the current standard in just a few minutes using conversion runs. If desired, the symbol definitions can be replaced with those corresponding to the current standard. The assignment of the text type (BmK, connection, cross-reference, or comment text) and the conversion of the text alignment (left-aligned BmKs are converted to right-aligned BmKs) are performed automatically.

To use newly added functions, such as target references at break points (potential cross-references), users also have the option of manually editing drawings. The time required for 100 pages of circuit diagrams is approximately 120 minutes.