topic Re: dwg file won't open in Inventor Forum

dwg file won't open

Josh_Hudson97 — Mon, 20 Mar 2023 08:58:59 GMT

Hi, a college create a .dwg in Inventor on Friday. And right as he finished a pressed Save Inventor crashed and we now seem to have lost the entire drawing. I have tried opening it within TrueView, AutoCAD and Inventor. Each gives a slightly different result.

Inventor just opens a file with no file name showing a blank template

AutoCAD says file is not valid

Has anyone else experienced anything similar? And if so did you manage to get the file working again?

Re: dwg file won't open

NigelHay — Mon, 20 Mar 2023 15:14:32 GMT

Have you looked in the file folder & 'Old Versions' to see if there is a back-up copy from before the crash?

Re: dwg file won't open

Josh_Hudson97 — Mon, 20 Mar 2023 16:36:27 GMT

Hi @NigelHay

Yeah the old versions allowed me to open them. I just thought it might be something we had done or a way to not lose the work between back ups

Re: dwg file won't open

NigelHay — Mon, 20 Mar 2023 16:48:11 GMT

Unfortunately, random crashes still happen although Inventor is pretty stable these days. There is no auto-save available There is an app in the Autodesk app store but it requires a small subscription. I think there are also iLogic solutions, maybe ask in the iLogic forum. Otherwise, all you can do is set the save reminder pop-up.

Re: dwg file won't open

johnsonshiue — Mon, 20 Mar 2023 23:33:49 GMT

Hi Josh,

It sounds like a file corruption issue to me. Please make sure the following option is unchecked. It is known to corrupt Inventor and AutoCAD files.

Control Panel -> Clock and Region -> Region -> Administrative -> Change System Locale -> uncheck "Beta: Use Windows Unicode UTF-8 for worldwide language support."

Many thanks!

Re: dwg file won't open

Josh_Hudson97 — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 08:25:54 GMT

Hi @johnsonshiue,

I have just has a look at that setting on all are users machines and it was already unchecked, so I don't think that will be the issue. Is there anything else we could check or have a look at?

@NigelHay, yeah we do have an iLogic autosave rule ready that we can implement if needed. I was cautious to do so as there are times you want to undo and save points restrict this, so I didn't want to frustrate users

Re: dwg file won't open

johnsonshiue — Wed, 22 Mar 2023 22:58:17 GMT

Hi Josh,

Another remote possibility could be due to certain file handling dlls were not loaded when they needed to be. Inventor loads dlls dynamically to boost startup performance. Recently we have seen some cases with wacky UI behaviors or file loading behaviors that cannot be reproduced internally. Nor is it reproducible consistently by the users. My suspicion is that certain dlls were blocked by the system or security settings when Inventor tried to load them.

Try the following to see if it helps avoid the corruption in the future.

Close Inventor. Go to Control Panel -> System -> Advanced System Settings -> Environment Variables -> create "DYNAMIC_LOAD_APPLETS" and set it to 0.

The only downside is the slightly longer startup time. With SSD drives, the delay should not be noticeable.

Many thanks!

Re: dwg file won't open

Josh_Hudson97 — Wed, 22 Mar 2023 10:46:59 GMT

Hi @johnsonshiue,

Ok thank you, we will try that setting and see if it makes any difference to us 👍