basics of dwg recovery

[morganism3]

I had a .dwg file open in AutoCAD when I had to force the program to shut down from the Windows task manager. (It had been frozen for a long time.) I then double-clicked to open the folder where the .dwg should have been, and it was not there. Instead there was only a .bak, .dwl, and .dwl2 of the file. I understand that I can change the .bak extension to a .dwg extension to at least use the backup copy, but is there anything else I can do?

notes:

1. Strangely enough, the .bak I have for the file is at least two saves behind, it's not as recent as it's supposed to be. 

2. Also, the drawing recovery manger opens when I open a new picture, but it shows the folder the lost file was in, and when I click the folder on the drawing recovery manager, there's no file inside. 

3. I cannot attach a file, it contains confidential client information.

[ennujozlagam]

hi, go to options>change to "SV$" (file extension for temporary files)>go to files create folder in your c: drive (or any drive available). Any unexpected error/crash just go to folder you have created and rename the .bak or .SV$ to .dwg and you will retrieve the latest drawing. Hope it helps. thanks

Please find attached.

[RockyBrown4134]

To add to ennujozlagam post, check the time setting for the AUTOSAVE and set it to something you are comfortable with. We have ours set to 15 minutes. We have used this procedure for years and it seems to be the simplest. We put these files in C:\acad_temp. BAK files are put in C:\BAK. these directories are cleaned out periodically.

[rkmcswain]

morganism3 wrote:

I had a .dwg file open in AutoCAD when I had to force the program to shut down from the Windows task manager. (It had been frozen for a long time.) I then double-clicked to open the folder where the .dwg should have been, and it was not there. Instead there was only a .bak, .dwl, and .dwl2 of the file. I understand that I can change the .bak extension to a .dwg extension to at least use the backup copy, but is there anything else I can do?

Was there a .TMP file (around the same date/time)?

When AutoCAD saves a drawing, it

* writes the contents of the editor to a .TMP file.

* renames the DWG to BAK (deleting the previous BAK in the process)

* renames the TMP to DWG

So if something happens between step 1 and the completion of step 3, the DWG file may be missing but the TMP might still be OK.