Is it possible to recover an unnamed, unsaved drawing?

[ghunt1981]

This is more of a general AutoCAD question, but...

I had started a new drawing on our template and worked on it for an hour or so. I had not saved it or anything so it was simply titled "Drawing2.dwg." Well, during a simple text command AutoCAD decided to crash. It said it could try to recover the drawing, but when I looked around for it I couldn't find it anywhere.

I've had this happen before...is there ANYTHING that can be done or did I just lose all my work? Ugh...

[AllenJessup · Accepted solution]

Depends what your Autosave was set to. If it was turned on and set to less than an hour you should have a

 file in your Automatic Save File Location:

It should have an .SV$ extension. Make a copy of it and rename that file to a .DWG extension.

If you didn't have Autosave set there isn't anything you can do.

Allen

[oldangel59]

I had a dwg crash also and found what looked like it was large enough to be my dwg file, it had an ac$ extension.  We attempted to change it to a dwg extension to restore it, but keep getting "drawing file is not valid" messages.  I've lost an entire day's work, is there anything or any way to convert this file to a usable dwg file?

Really appreciate any help, thanks.

[AllenJessup]

Unfortunately the ac$ files cannot be used for recovery. Only the sv$ are useable.

Allen Jessup

[rkmcswain]

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@oldangel59 wrote:

We attempted to change it to a dwg extension to restore it, but keep getting "drawing file is not valid" messages.  I've lost an entire day's work, is there anything or any way to convert this file to a usable dwg file?

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That is because.ac$ files are temporary files of variable content and not .dwg files

http://usa.autodesk.com/getdoc/id=TS1062993

I know it doesn't help now, but were you unaware that you could "lose a whole day's work"?

Did you think that AutoCAD saved the current file for you like some other programs do?

Just wondering.

[csevers]

The OP probably didn't realize that AutoCAD is so unstable that it crashes on a daily basis. I was also surprised of the program's instability when I first started using it. Most of us expect programs to just work, all the time, and only crash occasionally when we do things we're not supposed to, i.e. a browser only crashes when you open 100+ tabs, excel will only crash if you write a dumb macro, etc..

[dgorsman]

Daily crashes are certainly *not* common.

[neilyj666]

I certainly experience crashes at least once per day. ..

[csevers]

I also deal with crashes at least once per day, not always due to CAD, but it is the most frequent culprit.If your CAD isn't crashing, you're not utilizing C3D's full potential, as illogical as that sounds. 

[rkmcswain]

...a browser only crashes when you open 100+ tabs, excel will only crash if you write a dumb macro, etc..

I suspect most browsers and Excel combined don't contain 1/10th of the code that vanilla AutoCAD does, not to mention the verticals. I live with a crash or two a day because the pros far outweigh the cons.

[csevers]

I totall agree. But since we're not all programmers, and if you've only used much simplier applications previously, it's hard to comprehend the problems AutoCAD can have. I run into this on a day to day basis when I try to explain to my bosses that I'm having technical issues, and they look at me like, "What with that big calculator (computer) you use? Are you hitting the wrong button?" They cannot comprehend that there can be problems within software that is beyond user control. Many (most) people feel this way about software.

Anyway, I was just trying to defend the OP's point of view.

[AllenJessup]

I use Civil 3D. I wouldn't say that it crashes daily. But it can do it often enough that I'm careful about saving. I also use Autosave.

A trick I use is that I create a folder for the Autosave files and deny the SYSTEM the rights to delete files from that folder. That way Civil 3D can't erase the files if it thinks it's closed correctly. It also provides me with a pretty good chronology of the project. The down side is that once a month I have to remember to erase the useless files and write the useful files to an external drive so the temp file location doesn't get choked.

Allen

[ccoles]

Around here, we say that if Civil 3D doesn't crash at least once a day, your not using it correctly. I've been adamant about having me and the other CAD techs using autosave and just hitting the quick save button on a regular basis. And, teach them to save to some filename somewhere once you start working a brand new file. I don't know if autosave can kick in unless you have it saved with a filename to a directory. I can easily say that autosave has saved me worlds of hurt in the past. Like sometimes when you're so deep into a design, forget to save, and Civil 3D decides to crash just as you try to make a simple adjustment to a feature line or edit some text. Losing 10 to 15 minutes of work sure beats losing 2 hours of work.

[ghunt1981]

I didn't think AutoCAD was necessarily super unstable until recently. Did they do an update or change something? Because I've been working in Carlson 2014, and it's crashed more on me in the last 2 weeks than in the preceding several months. I've had it crash at least once daily, often more than once, in the past 2 weeks. And it's usually when you're doing something simple like trying to undo, or do a double-click edit on text, or even just switch layout tabs. Thank God for Autosave at least.

[andrewpuller3811]

If you autosave is enabled, check in your temporary folder as suggested above.

If you did not save the file, the autosave files will have a names like

Drawing1_1_1_2129.bak

Drawing1_1_1_2129.sv$

Other than that, I think you are out of luck.

Best to have save a drawing before you do any work, even if it is in a temporary location, and you can move it later.

[bex_horne]

You just saved my day Allen! Thank you! 

[neilyj666]

A method I've started to use is to type SAVE on the command line which will obviously save but will allow you to rename and will then continue in the original file.

[AllenJessup]

Glad it helped someone. Welcome to the forum.

Allen

[bzvj]

Thank you for the question, and thank you Allen....it works for me...soooo please it works....awesome..

cheers,

[cvlci_CAD]

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@AllenJessup wrote:

Unfortunately the ac$ files cannot be used for recovery. Only the sv$ are useable.

Allen Jessup

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Not entirely true.  You are correct with the ac$ files but believe or not, you can sometimes use the .tmp files that are created.  Not sure if windows creates them between the time the autosave is started and the .sv$ is created but it happens.