It's easy to identify the current version of a file before you open it directly within the open dialog from within Revit. So let's look at the file format issue within the software. Each of those variations use the same file format each year. Now when speaking of Revit versions here, we are only discussing the version number, the year, not the variation of Revit, such as Revit, or the AEC collection, or Revit LT. If you do so, the person with the more recent version will be able to open the older files just fine, but if they save them, there will be no way to resave them back to the older version, making it impossible for the person with the older release to access those files moving forward. It is not advisable to attempt to work with users on a different Revit version. So, it is very important that you know which version of Revit you are using and that anyone you wish to share Revit files with is using the same version as you.

In other words, Revit is not backward compatible. The critical point to understand here is that once you upgrade to a new release of Revit, you cannot save backwards.

Each major release of Revit introduces a new file format, point releases do not. Each major release is enumerated with the year like 2020, or 2021 with smaller releases receiving a point designation, such as 2021.1 or. Like most products in the Autodesk portfolio, Revit has a major new release annually with several smaller feature releases being made available to customers on subscription throughout the year.

Revit 2021 to 2020