How to open a file solidworks 2017 on solidworks 2016
2 Answer
Save it as a step, parasolid, or iges file first, then you'll be able to open it. Solidworks files are not backward compatible so it will become a 'dumb solid', which doesn't mean you can't work on it, but it will lose all it's parametric feature history, and you'll be limited as to what you can do to it.