Tecplot 360 has strong backward-compatibility: newer versions will load layouts from versions as old as Tecplot 7.5 (>10 years ago). Forward-compatibility, that is, a layout in a newer version will be readable by one in a previous version, has not been something we’ve spent time on. In an effort to help users who are unable or unwilling to update to the current version, here is a rough summary of the major changes in layout files between versions.
| Layout file version | Changes from previous version | |
| 2010R1 | ||
| Features affecting layouts: | The major thing affecting layout files is the support for arbitrary system fonts in annotations, axes, and scatter symbols | |
| Layout differences between 2010R1 and 2009R2 | Commenting these out will let an older version of Tecplot load the layout, but the layout fonts will be different: | |
| FONTFAMILY – defines which font family (e.g., Calibri, Wingdings) used for that text widget (for example, $!ATTACHTEXT, TEXTSHAPE) | ||
| ISITALIC, ISBOLD - modifiers to the font family | ||
| BASEFONTFAMILY – sets the font family for use in symbols of type “other” | ||
| BASEFONTISITALIC, BASEFONTISBOLD – see above | ||
| 2009R2 | ||
| Comments | The major thrust of 2009R2 was speed. Large datasets (186M, finite element, multiple zones) load 2.5x faster than in 2009R1. | |
| Layout differences between 2009R2 and 2009R1 | To my knowledge, there are no layout changes between this and 2009R1 | |
| 2009R1 | ||
| Comments | The major effort was improving frame management. | |
| Layout differences between 2009R1 and 2008R2 | We should have changed the layout version number for 2008R2. We did in 2009R1, which will always generate a warning in older layouts (as it should) #!MC 1200 |
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| To improve the user experience when working with multiple frames, we added the notion of an active frame, and that frame does not necessarily have to be on top. In previous versions, clicking on a frame would cause it to pop to the top. Users would tend to keep the “Order Frames” dialog up. You should be able to just comment this out: | ||
| $!FRAMECONTROL ACTIVATEBYNUMBER FRAME=… | ||
| Smooth surface clipping uses the slicing interface. There is an additional macro extension that can be commented out: | ||
| CLIPPLANE = … | ||
| Auxiliary data editor, key frame animation, mirroring are journaled. If these add-ons are not present, there will be errors. | ||
| 2008R2 | ||
| Comments: | A major thrust of this release was to reduce the number of clicks necessary to get to a reasonable plot after loading data. To accomplish this and preserve backward compatibility, we introduced a new style setting for volume zones. | |
| Layout differences between 2008R2 and 2008R1 | If Tecplot finds a volume zone and its SURFACESTOPLOT value is set to “NONE” then that volume zone has mesh, contour, vector, shade turned off for that zone independent of the setting for the zone. Thus, merely commenting this out or changing it to EXPOSEDCELLFACES is insufficient for rendering the same plot: | |
| SURFACES { SURFACESTOPLOT = NONE } | ||
| Changing this affects the “view->fit” function. | ||
| Rather last minute, we added an additional attribute to set the OpenGL clipping ratio – this affected a customer who was doing solar system-scale models. This can be commented out: | ||
| NEARPLANEFRACTION = 0.1 | ||
| Additionaly, we changed other default effects, though these should be okay when read in older versions: | ||
| Edges default to “Borders and creases” | ||
| Colors do not cycle – all meshes and lines are black (this can be changed in the tecplot.cfg file) | ||
| If a surface has auxiliary data defining it as a boundary and it’s of type “wall,” then the surface is shown; otherwise, the surface is not shown. (In the layout, the zone is either on or off.) | ||
| The default lighting includes specular highlights and a different view angle | ||
| Gouraud shading is preferred over paneled | ||