when were the last edits ?

[fallingdog]

So we have all these dwg files that have been mixed up with old and new, and we need to find the most up to date ones. Is there a way to find out when the last drawing object was created within each file, or other edit was done? Preferably with out opening the file? It is not good enough to know when the last time the file was opened; because some one may have just opened it made no changes and then closed it. Also we have AutoCAD LT 2010 so LISP or VBA is not an option.

Thanks for the Help

[pendean]

This is were your office controls for file versioning comes in (my guess is you don't have one?): you change the file name with every new version if you MUST hold on to each and every DWG file. Some folks prefer a date in the name, others like to use a series number (SP1, SP2... SP22 and so on).

Since you appear to have none of the above, please provide those of us over here with your thoughts on how to spot the difference in these files as you do not really provide any good methods (you note "find out when the last drawing object was created within each file, or other edit was done" as options, which we both know is no indication at all).
Do you by chance have a print-out to compare?

A quick way to at least find differences in files: plot each DWG to a DWF, then download the free dwf viewer from Autodesk (DesignReview), which has a Compare Sheets option, to highlight the differences. It only works on pairs of DWF, so repeat for every pair.

And develop an inhouse system for file versioning.

[fallingdog]

thanks for the reply

yes,the convention at work is "folder name date" each file is not renamed because there may be 25 or so dwg files in each sheet set. Then in each dwg in the revision block we note the date of the last change and who made it. however, someone did not follow the standard and now there is a mess.

I did not know about using dwf files to find the differences - and this maybe a good approach I will suggest it.

yes, we could print out and compare the sheets, but this would use many man hours as they are electrical schematics and have lots of info in them and there are a few hunderd sheet sets.