Important versioning details
List of: Discussion Topic
Subjects: Extending ACIS, C++ Interface
Contents: Application Development Manual

An ACIS version consists of a 3 digits: major, minor, and point. A major release will cause an increase in the major version, a minor release will cause an increase in the minor version, and an ACIS service pack will cause an increase in the point version.

While it is almost always the case that major and minor releases cause changes to the shape/topology of a model, Spatial service packs try as much as possible not to modify the topology or the shape of a model. However, it is possible that for a specific bug fix we will introduce a topology/shape change in a service pack.

If your application depends on a specific version of ACIS (for shape/topology reasons), you can use ACIS versioning to target that version. However, note that once Spatial adds versioning because of a shape/topology change, we will not make any fixes to older versioned algorithms. Therefore, be aware that using ACIS versioning to target a specific version of ACIS will prevent you from receiving the benefit of bug fixes in future service packs.

There is currently one API whose behavior is intentionally not versioned: api_check_entity. Therefore, customers should not use api_check_entity's results to determine the algorithmic flow of their application. Also, api_check_entity's performance is not guaranteed. Instead, api_check_entity is being continually refined to meet this simple goal: to provide the caller the most comprehensive verification of their model.
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