Compatibility Guarantee

Compatibility Guarantee – Long-Term Archiving of Circuit Diagrams

The life cycle of machinery and equipment is generally well over 10 years. Experience shows that machinery and equipment are typically expanded or retrofitted for the first time after 5 to 10 years.

With a house, the situation is usually even more extreme. In such cases, customers typically don’t contact electrical engineers specializing in energy and building technology for major changes until 10 to 20 years have passed.

In our view, it is therefore absolutely essential to be able to import and edit an archived circuit diagram in the currently used version of Treesoft CAD, 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—and consistently honored to this day—or realize it only when it is too late. To the best of our knowledge, Treesoft GmbH & Co. KG is the only software provider that offers such a guarantee and actually fulfills it.

We frequently hear from prospective customers who use other electrical CAD programs and want 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 can only be done with a great deal of effort and the associated costs.

Treesoft guarantees:

“Treesoft guarantees that, when used on the same operating system, all existing data or data created by the customer using the program can also be used with the updates or upgrades sent to the customer. However, this may require the conversion of the customer’s data, which is then carried out largely automatically using a program provided 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 during the transition from the Microsoft DOS operating system to Microsoft Windows 98. In doing so, the item lists used in TreeCAD DOS were converted to the Paradox database upon request.

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-bit and 64-bit)
• Windows XP (32-bit and 64-bit) on Windows 7
• Windows 7 to Windows 8 / 8.1
• Windows 8 / 8.1 to Windows 10
• Windows 10 to Windows 11

As part of the upgrade from TreeCAD 5.9 to Treesoft Office 6.0, we have, of course, also migrated 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.

Treesoft CAD file format has been backward-compatible for more than 35 years!

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

To take advantage of newly added features, such as destination hints at breakpoints (potential cross-references), users also have the option to manually edit drawings. This takes approximately 120 minutes for a 100-page circuit diagram.

If the appearance of symbols has changed due to new standards, no problem: Treesoft CAD users can replace the symbol definitions in their drawing files with the current ones at the click of a button—the perfect solution.