I’m old and stubborn so I use Pads v1.5 for board layout as it has a better auto-router and better manual routing than Pads v7 (also pretty old now) which I have access to. I now use v7 only to convert RS274D to RS274X. It’s a bother. Does anyone know of a good RS274D to RS274X converter?
I just go into the text editor and convert by hand. It’s very easy and quick for simple layers that don’t have ground planes with chainsaw cuts and complex things like that. Those take longer, but if you do them often enough to justify getting a newer CAD, then you’ll also be quick enough that you won’t need the newer CAD. One reason I don’t want the newer CAD is because I have hundreds of special components that I don’t want to have to re-create in a new CAD package. I do use a gerber viewer aterward (gerbv, under Linux) to make sure I got what I wanted and didn’t mess up in the process, and to take screenshots to email with the files.