AutoCAD 2000/2000i/2002 DWG Format Archive

[#1]

This posting refers to failures in saving AutoCAD files and the increasing presence of temporary files, ATMP#### (i.e. ATMP1234), that should not be left after a successful save. In some cases, the CAD user ends up with a complete DWG file, including changes. In other cases, the DWG is completely missing. I logged a support call with AutoCAD, Case No. 1034177, and found that the errors my company are experiencing have plagued AutoCAD for many versions, without a successful resolution. After I heard this, I ran a dir /s /u ATMP* on 4 or 5 of our servers and found that we have close to 1,000 ATMP#### files, by an assortment of users. The list includes files created by AutoCAD 2002/2004 and earlier, Architectural Desktop 2002/2004 and Land Development. My staff installed a diagnostic program, Filemon, and used it to track what AutoCAD 2002 does when a file is saved. AutoCAD 2004 seems to be similar. We captured file activity from the Save and came up with the following process. In this process, all of the files were created in folders on the drive letter that the file was opened on. So, for example, if the file was opened on D:\temp, all of the files mentioned in the process steps would be in D:\temp. 1. The user runs File-Save or Qsave 2. Autocad checks for the existance of a file Save.ac$. If a file of this name does not exist, AutoCAD will save your AutoCAD work to Save.ac$, starting in Step 4. 3. If Save.AC$ exists, then AutoCAD determines a file to use that is unique and has the format Sav###.ac$. For example Sav123.ac$. If you are using AutoCAD 2004, the file seems to take the format of Sav123.tmp. 4. AutoCAD then looks for a Sav###.dwk file. This is apparently done to support previous versions of AutoCAD since the dwk file locking is not used in 2002/2004. If the file is found, it would probably generate a Read-Only message since the file would indicate that someone has the file locked using an older version of AutoCAD. In our case, no dwk files would be found. 5. AutoCAD writes all of your CAD changes from memory to the filename Save.ac$, Sav123.ac$ or Sav123.tmp. This file will eventually be your dwg file with revisions. 6. The original dwg file is renamed to Atmp####, for example Atmp1234 (no extension). 7. If a bak file existing when you started, it is deleted in this step. 8. The Atmp1234 file is renamed to Filename.bak 9. The Save.ac$, Sav123.ac$ or Sav123.tmp is renamed to Filename.dwg. This is your saved dwg file. 10. The Filename.dwg file is opened One of our techs was losing his dwg files. But, the Sav###.ac$ file existed as well as the Atmp### file. So his process was crashing about Step 8. This happened if he saved his drawing on a network drive or on his local D: drive. I have two other users that have lost dwg files in a similar fashion. I have hundreds of others that left Atmp#### files, but did not lose their dwg file. I am not sure why this is. Sometimes, a message is generated: ***Unable to save to drawing D:\Temp\Test01.dwg Drawing saved to D:\Temp\Sav216.tmp***(see attachment, this is from 2004) This message is not always generated. It looks like that closing AutoCAD or the drawing, and saving when it asks, may fail sometimes and not generate the message. When I discussed this with Autodesk, they have been aware of this problem for some time. They have had Microsoft examine their code. They claim that Microsoft declared their code sound. My evidence shows that this is not true. So Autodesk has blamed slow computers, too fast computers, servers, using CAD files over a WAN-speed connection, Windows (losing lock requests) and such. All of these put the blame on the local hardware, software or network. Since a lot of file re-naming is involved, Windows must lose some of them due to timing issues. Probably Microsoft needs to fix something or explain the solution to Autodesk. I suggested that Autodesk change their code to detect the failure and then give the user a chance to try again. The tech support person told me they were worried about tinkering with the code - that they could make things worse. I am concerned that we are getting 800 of the Atmp### files per month. This started in late April 2004. Prior to this, we have some, but not nearly so many. In April, May and June, we converted our servers to Windows Server 2003. We also changed our domain name and instigated Shadow Copy. We speculate that Shadow Copy may aggravate this problem, but it is only a theory. My next step is to log a call with Microsoft support. If anyone has additional information, please post it. I will do the same.

[#2]

JRH:

Any further progress here? We're seeing quite a few atmp* files, and they don't seem to cause any problems beyond consuming drive space.

We're using many seats of 2002, and a few of 2004 on a Novell-based network, with Win2K workstations.

[#3]

I second the motion, I started the exact same investigation before I stumbled upon this post. We are experiencing the same problem on Windows XP and 2K machines (XP have 1Gig RAM with 3Ghz processors and the W2k machine is a P3 with 700MB ram). The machines are running Architectural Desktop 2005. The problem is much more frequent on the slower machine but not limited to it. With multiple files opened, closing AutoCAD will render many orphaned atmp files.

In our case, the original dwg file is lost (atmp file never gets renamed to it's proper dwg name). This is obviously causing much concern from my customer and, as expected, our reseller (ProCAD) had the gull of discarding the issue as being virus related.

So, any update on this would be greatly appreciated.

[#4]

I realize this is an old post but as a recent search it's still relevant today with release 2012 AutoCAD. My question to all that have had or are having this issue is; are your servers Novell based? If so how much free space did you have on the server when the problem occurred?  We currently have Novell servers and find that this problem occurs when the servers are close to being out of space. It seems that Novell will run in a compressed mode until there is enough free space for it to operate normally. To elaborate Novell will take an accessed file and uncompress it to make it available to the requesting client (workstation). Since AutoCAD manipulates the file at the workstation the file in essence is static on the server. This is why you can still save your AutoCAD file locally if you lose your network connection but would lose an Excel or Word file that was on the network. If the server was low on space and someone else accesses a file on the server it will see the other file as being static and recompress it to allow the other file or files to be accessed. When its time to save the file it seems we end up in this server workstation chaos. As a note I am not an IT guy but a very experienced AutoCAD abuser like the rest of you.

Thank you in advance for reading and possibly responding to my post.