I am in the middle of a project using DS 9.
When I attempted to open the project today I found DS 9 now refuses run so I was forced to install DS 11.
Now I find all the libraries I was using with DS 9 are missing from the list in DS 11. The DS 9 project is broken. Because I can't even run DS 9 I am now unable to determine which libraries I was using or the order in which they were searched. The order is important because some items may have had the same names.
I think I had libs included from DS 7, DS 8 and DS8.1 that were held in...
C:\Users\Public\Documents\DesignSpark PCB 7.0\Library
C:\Users\Public\Documents\DesignSpark PCB 8.0\Library
C:\Users\Public\Documents\DesignSpark PCB 8.1\Library
The DS 7 Libraries include additional folders called 'DownloadedLibrary', 'MountingHole' and 'SnapEDA' so I'm pretty sure those were included somewhere in the list.
When DS 9 came along, libraries were moved into
C:\Users\<user name>\Documents\DesignSpark PCB 9.0\Library
This completely screwed things up for me and I had to modify the library list to include the original folders under Public\Documents.
I can't remember if the new DS 9 libs were left included in the list or if I removed them.
All the problems this caused is why I subsequently avoided updating from DS 9 to DS 10 or DS 11.
Now I have no choice.
How can I find out which libs were included and the sort order? It's important that I get everything back to how it was before DS 9 was disabled otherwise it could break things and introduce errors that could go unnoticed.
IMHO completely disabling older versions of DS is a REALLY bad idea. Why can't they continue to run in read only mode so that at least users can examine library and technology files etc. while transitioning to the new version. It's a bit like Microsoft completely disabling Windows 10 and preventing access to existing files before users have moved to Windows 11.
After previous updates (DS 7 through to DS10), earlier versions continued to run. It was left to users to decide whether to update and/or keep earlier versions. That way users were immunue to new bugs or unwanted changes that might disrupt existing projects. Why have you now chosen to completely disable earlier versions? You don't have to support them, just allow them to run as before. It makes no sense.
In my view the fundamental problem here is that the list of libraries and the search order are user selectable options. As such, they should be stored as part of the project file and not overwritten every time DS is updated. I can't imagine anyone wanting to pay a subscription fee for flawed software.
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