Unexpected file format

[davidcurtis123]

Been using autosketch from when it was Drafix
Running Autosketch v9 now.
Just spent 3 hours editing a drawing and got 'unexpected file format' message.
Never had this had before after many thousands of drawings
Can anyone help

[fredt]

I noticed that nobody answered.

Not that I would know the answer either way, but you may wish to clarify one confusing area of your post, which would be to clarify what action led to the "unexpected file format" error message. From you description it looks like it happened while editing a drawing. Most programs give this message when opening a file. (a file of a type that the program can't handle, a file of a type that doesn't match the extension, a file created in a version newer than the software, or a file that is that is corrupted)

[davidcurtis123]

Thanks for coming back to me
I was saving the file and it took an age and would not complete the save, it seems as if the file wasnt saved in its entirety
The message comes up when I try open the file (only that particular file - all others are OK)
The drawing comes up in the preview box and looks OK in the 'Open File' menu
Any ideas

Regards

David Curtis

[Anonymous]

Hello

Two things

First try merging corrupt file onto a blank drawing (File>Merge)

Secondly sometimes AutoSketch makes a temp file in the autosketch directory when saving. Not sure
of the extension but it might be worth a look.

Paul J

davidcurtis123 wrote:
> Thanks for coming back to me
> I was saving the file and it took an age and would not complete the save, it seems as if the file wasnt saved in its entirety
> The message comes up when I try open the file (only that particular file - all others are OK)
> The drawing comes up in the preview box and looks OK in the 'Open File' menu
> Any ideas
>
> Regards
>
> David Curtis

[davidcurtis123]

thanks for the tip Paul

I tried to merge but unfortunately it did'nt work

client pressure has forced me to redraw so have now deleted the corrupt drawing

[Douglas_Grubbs]

Hi David,
I have the same problem exactly!!!
Aaaaaarrrrgghh!
Did you find a solution when this happens?
This is the second time for me. The first time I was okay but not this time.
3 or 4 hours of more work for me...
Please someone help!
-Douglas

[Mazey]

Hi guys,

I am using AutoSketch 8 and I have been having this same issue with a certain file. It was crashing everytime I hit the save button. It gave me the option to 'continue' or 'shutdown' where as 'continue' attempts to save a recovery file and 'shutdown' shuts down the autosketch program. The recovery always fails and the program shutdowns anyway. On trying to re-open the drawing I get the message "Unexpected File Format" and the file can not open, it is also reduced to a few kbs in size and the thumbnail preview still shows the drawing. After losing many hours of work and spending several more on trying to find out why, I came across a symbol in the drawing. The program would run fine and the file would save ok until I imported a certain symbol. I already had another symbol in the drawing with the same name so when the new symbol was inserted into the drawing it showed up as the old symbol (standad AutoSketch behaviour). For the drawing to show the correct symbol I had to go into the Content Explorer, right click on the new symbol, and 'send' it to the drawing. Once I had done this, the new symbol would override the old symbol and thats when the trouble started. Everything would then run fine but as soon as I clicked on save, the drawing would crash and become corrupt. I could still recover the file by opening AutoSketch, go to file, open, browse to find the folder that the corrupt file is in, then in the box where you type the file name type *.tmp and hit enter. This should show you the temp file which you can open and save over the corrupt file. The only issue with this is that it will open from the last correct save. I eventually found out that the issue I was having was when the original symbol was deleted, removed, modified, etc through the Content Explorer. The only way I found to get around this was to find all the symbols in the drawings and delete them, then select the whole drawings and paste it to another page. This effectively copied everything over apart from that symbol and I was again able to save my drawing without losing it.

I have also had this happen numerous times when trying to open drawings in AutoSketch when they have been converted from DWG to SKF. I just put this down to errors during the conversion and didn't bother to much about the reasons. I did find it was easier to convert from DWG to SKF if the DWG files is saved as the earliest possible version of CAD. For example if a file is drawn in AutoCAD 2009, then save it as an AutoCAD R14 version DWG then open that file through AutoSketch 9, and if need be, save that one as AutoSketch V7/8 if you have to open it using AutoSketch 8.

I'm not sure if this reallys helps or not, but it may be a starting point as to why your files are corrupting. Hopefully someone else will be able to shed some light on this extremely frustrating AutoSketch problem.

[kitty1000]

The same thing has happened to me many times and i was lost!! I was trying to figure this our recently when I stumbled accross a temp file (in the same folder i was saving my original file to), with a different name to my original file (eg. MFC4F.tmp), but around about the same size file as the one lost. I opened this file with Autosketch, and found my lost file!

I saved it over with a new name and havent had problems since!

hope this helps

[jeffstrike]

Thanks for that.

Finding the tmp file, re-naming it and successfully opening it saved me having to repeat two weeks of work.

What a relief.

Jeff