Inventor 2013 lost all projects

[Anonymous]

Hello,

My name is Jelle i am 18 year old electromechanics student in Belgium. For my thesis I am designing and fabricating a robot. I drew the robot fully in Inventor 2013 on my laptop with windows 7. Last night I tried opening my robot project when suddenly every single file of all my projects were gone. 

When I opened inventor en went to recently opened files and I clicked one of those recent opened files it said it couldn't

find the file.

I hope someone can help me recovering those files,because I really need those drawings for my thesis.

Thank you, Jelle.

[graemev]

To confirm that the file actually still exists on the drive, do a Windows Explorer search for "*.ipj" and "*.ipt" files.  If they are still there, go back into Inventor, and from the Projects dialog box, Browse to the location of the .ipj file.  The part files should be available to open in Inventor's Open dialog box after that.  If the Windows Explorer search fails, you may have serious trouble.

[JDMather]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

... of all my projects ....

---

I don't understand why you would have more than one project.  Are you referring to the *.ipj file?  You should have only  one and make sure it is active before working on any other Inventor files.  Keep everything in one folder with sub-folders if desired and the *.ipj project at the top level folder.

[rhasell]

-------------------

When I opened inventor en went to recently opened files and I clicked one of those recent opened files it said it couldn't

find the file.

-------------------

1: Check to see if the the file location listed is valid.  The location might be to an external drive (Thumb drive/network etc)

2: Use explorer or better to track down the location of the files. (The host directory might be hidden)

[graemev]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

I don't understand why you would have more than one project.

---

Where I work we have project file for each customer project we do plus a couple for "miscellaneous" bits and pieces.  Each is located in its own project folder, which is further organized into parent folders by year of project initiation.  All customer related files (customer drawing PDFs, quotes, proposals, ECOs, ITPs, etc.) are also contained in the relevant project folders.  Not all folders reside on the same server.

This form of organization is not wrong.  Neither is yours. We merely choose to organize things differently, and our method suits our needs.

[JDMather]

The OP is a student working on a student project and lost files.

My answer was  intended only for this student as a beginner obviously having trouble keeping track of files as a means of file rock-solid management.

Over the years I have had sooooo many students turn in only an iam file for a project grade that I learned to have them set up the most basic of file structures (one top level folder with an ipj and all other folders/files within that project folder).

I think I recall even had to remind a professional or two here (getting paid for this stuff) about assembly files/part files.

[graemev]

Yes, well... there is that.  lol

[Anonymous]

Thank you all for your reactions, i still haven't found my files. i searched the files even with 'FileSeek', but it yielded nothing. 

The file location names are the same name of the place they were used to be saved on, so i guess i have to draw everything again. although thanks for the advice guys!

[Anonymous]

JDMather,

At first thanks for your advice.
I started my electromechanics course here in belgium when i was 14, since then i started using ACAD and inventor. i had many projects like compressed air engine, RC car build,... and never had any problems using different projects.
now i had 2 projects: Thesis and sheet metal cutter, when just suddenly one day i wanted to open one and the IPJ files + Project Folder were gone.

Greetings

[Mark_Wigan]

if it was me then i would download a trial version of "undelete" and see if it revelas your files in the original location if you have permission to run that on the computer or network. just check with your administrator first though.

as long as you have not written new files with the same name into the original location they may be able to be found, if they were deleted or otherwise zapped in some way.

once, when i was a very new beginner to CAD, i lost access to a bunch of files after i foolishly ran a compression / encryption utility on my c drive. it was painful to recover from that.

if you find the files then you may need to pay for the license to be able to restore them. (or obtain a free alternative). or if you cannot afford this then i can assist you to recover them if you need me to, but just try to run the scan first, then let me know.

i personally do not like having to do something twice so i think it is worth the effort to check this.

good luck!

[Anonymous]

Doing a Google Search I also found this program....

Recuva

"Recuva is the very best free file recovery software available, hands down. It's very easy to use but has many optional advanced features as well.

Recuva can recover files from hard drives, external drives (USB drives, etc.) and memory cards. Recuva can even undelete files from your iPod!

Recuva will undelete files in Windows 8, 7, Vista, XP, Server 2008/2003, and older Windows versions like 2000, NT, ME and 98. 64-bit Windows versions are also supported. There is also a 64-bit version Recuva available.

Piriform provides both an installable and a portable version of Recuva. I tested file recovery with Recuva v1.45.858 using their portable version in Windows 7.

Undeleting a file with Recuva is as easy as deleting one! I highly recommend that you try Recuva first if you need to recover a file."

Also worth a shot! Good luck with finding them.

[mrattray]

By chance, are your files being stored on your school's network? If so, the network administrator should be able to recover the files for you.
If not, you may be able to get one of the IT people at your school to take a look at your laptop.

[JDMather]

And of course, if you are successful in recovering the files - make your own back-up copies.

[Anonymous]

Thanks to Recuva I was able to track my documents down, I managed to save them back in my documents. But now I have it saved as a temporary file (.tmp) called '~WRL0001.tmp'

And this is what I found on wikipedia: 

"Temporary files are files created to temporarily contain information while a new file is being made. It may be destroyed by computer programs for a variety of purposes; principally when a program cannot allocate enough memory for its tasks, when the program is working on data bigger than the architecture's address space, or as a primitive form of inter-process communication."

My pc is HP Pavilion dv7 with 12gb RAM and intel i7 quadcore, and I used the school's network rarely. I don't think the program couldn't allocate enough memory for it's tasks.

Is there still a way I can bring back my files with that .tmp file? 

[JDMather]

You could try renaming to *.ipt, *.iam as appropriate, but I don't think these temp files are the files you need to find.

also, what about Oldversions folder?

[Anonymous]

Renaming them didn't work and oldversions are also gone. 

[rhasell]

You have to ask yourself why this happened, and how do you stop it from happening again?

Do a Virus check.

Restart your machine at least once a day. (I know of people in my office who leave their machines running for a week or more)

If your computer recovers from any failure, no matter how small, restart your machine.

Check your available disk space.

Clear your temp directory often (I set mine to C:\TEMP, this way I can manage it eaisier)

Save your work often.

Try and implement a backup solution (Easier said than done if you are not on a network)

Don't rule out the possibility of a hardware fault.

Good luck.

[blair]

If it's worth doing, it worth backing up. Generally files and folders just don't disappear on a computer. I am not a big believer in the User profile directories, I like to have folders at the C:\ level such as Work, Document, Temp and DownLoad.

If I log into a machine as a different user, the files I need are always in the same location.