Troubleshooting guide for corrupt drawings

If you are experiencing a drawing-specific issue, sometimes this can be traced back to drawing corruption. This could range anywhere from a small issue to the inability to open a file. In this post, the Being Civil Team worked together to bring you all the tools and tips that we use when troubleshooting these files.

PrefaceI always skip over the Preface when reading a book, but this is some important stuff, so I will keep it short, sweet, and in bullet format

• Make sure you are using some sort of backup system. I can’t stress this enough. Computers are not perfect. Hard drives don’t last forever. Bad things WILL happen at some point. Make sure you are prepared with regular backups of your system. Larger companies typically have robust servers so that you don’t have to think about it. But I have seen many “mom and pop” shops with sub-par backup strategies.
  
  Hard drives are cheap. Spending a week recreating a project is not.
• Don’t keep your entire project design in a single drawing. Not only is this bad from a performance standpoint, but you are at a greater risk if something goes wrong. I guess we could use the “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket” analogy here.
• Refer to the Best Practices Guide, found in the Help Menu, for good tips on setting up a Project correctly. Although often overlooked, this document contains tons of great information on the best way to set up a project. If you have specific questions about the best set for your company, your Reseller is a good contact point.
• Be aware of your AutoSAVE settings. If you want this on, double-check your settings in the OPTIONS to confirm it. While you are at it, check the location of those files. Technical Solution on AutoSave (TS67319)
• Did I already mention backups? Good, while it’s worth mentioning twice!

The Basics

The AUDIT and PURGE commands are things you should be using on a regular basis to keep your files clean. In the event that the AUDIT finds an error, you will be allowed to fix it at this time. This is probably a good time to talk about this command. In some cases, you may have found that AUDIT did not find any errors in 2009, but there were several found in 2010. This is because the AUDIT feature is typically increased in its ability to find errors with each release. So while all may seem well in 2009, the reality is that the errors were probably there, they were just undetectable in the earlier release.

A slight modification of the PURGE command is the –PURGE (notice the dash in front of it). This is a command-line based option, that will give you a few more items to purge. If you type “R”, you will be able to purge out unused RegApps (registered applications).

Occasionally, your Scale List can get a little out of control. Use SCALELISTEDITto get rid of some of the clutter and reset things back to stock.

Recover, Part 1

Let’s say you have drawing that is giving you some issues. You can open it up, but things aren’t quite right. Here is a list of things we try. Sometimes a single procedure works, but sometimes a combination of them.

• WBLOCK the entire drawing into a brand new drawing. If you are sure that your custom template is not suspect, you can insert into that to. However, if in doubt, insert into a drawing created from the acad.dwt template.
• Open the problem drawing, and then select all of the desired objects, and then WBLOCK all of this data out. This is similar to above, but sometimes brings better results.
• You can export your Civil Objects (Surfaces, Alignments, etc) via LandXML. I use this a lot when I suspect a problem related to a specific Object. Keep in mind, this only brings over the data. No AutoCAD linework or text is brought over.
• Use QSELECT to WBLOCK out specific AutoCAD linework, and then use LandXML to export out the Civil Objects. This is a good combination that takes care of a lot of problem drawings.
• Export to AutoCAD. This is going to “dumb down” your drawing to straight AutoCAD entities. Use this in conjunction with LandXML to recreate your drawing.
• Use Design Center to bring AutoCAD objects over to a new drawing. http://support.autodesk.com/getdoc.asp?id=TS60657

Recover, Part 2

Now let’s move on to a worst-case scenario - you have a single drawing file that won’t open. Now what? There is limited troubleshooting we can do here, and a good example of why daily backups are so critical.

• Start a new drawing and then use the RECOVER command to try and open the drawing. RECOVERALL does the same thing, but attempts to recover the XREF’s associated with the file
• If you have XREF’s or Images associated with the file, make a copy of the problem drawing and put it in a new location. This will break the connection, and possibly allow the file to be open, if the problem was with one of the linked files.
• Look for your backup file (.bak) which is stored in the same location of the .dwg file. To open this, you simply need to rename the file from .bak to .dwg. This backup may be just far enough back to be prior to the point of corruption.
• Look for your Autosave file. This is with the extension of .SV$. Do a search of your hard drive, as the stored location is not always the same. This can be set in your Options.
• If all else fails, then you may need to revert back to a company backup of the file.

I hope this sheds some light on the process of working with corrupt files. I hope to keep this as a “living post” - meaning I may come back and add more information as I see it being useful to our users.