Flush... there go all my points!

[camptech]

After spending 5 hours drafting, calculating house stake points for a custom house... and checking and re-checking things... I went to create my .DXF files for my data collector, but Civil3D was not writing out any .dxf files.  So, since it was getting wonky, and I had not re-started all morning, I saved my work, closed Civil3D and re-started...

only to find...

ALL MY POINTS and POINT GROUPS f***ing vanished!  Gone.  Like they had never existed. 

Made copies of my .dwg and .bak file.  Then re-named the .bak file to .dwg and tried it.  Nope, gone too.

Has anyone had the privilege of this feature wherein all your points and point groups just up and disappear?

Can anyone tell me what I did wrong so I can avoid this feature in the future?

TIA.

[camptech]

*ALL* styles are gone too.  All Description Key Sets are gone.

It's almost like the **** program overwrote the original drawing as a DXF file, but with the .dwg extension.

/SMH

It's not even noon and I need a drink.

[AllenJessup]

Backup bad too?

[camptech]

Backup as in the .bak file?

Yeah.  Gone there too.

I dunno what I did.  I did notice that the program wasn't writing out the .dxf files that I was trying to export for my data collector.  So I re-saved my work as a .dwg file (as best I can tell that is what I did -- as I have done many times before)... but all points / point groups / styles / description key sets are gone.  But my layout tabs all seem to be there.

[camptech]

I was able to restore point/line styles, point description sets etc by doing the insert drawing into current drawing, then hitting <ESCAPE> instead of enter.

BUT... the drawing had a surface from which I needed to extract Z-values when creating points.  The surface layers were showing up in the layer tree.  The surfaces were being displayed in the Prospector tree, but I could not get contours to display.  

I've already lost hours to this new C3D trick.  I can't go trying to debug / troubleshoot this product.  Am going to have to go back to the original drawing and salvage what I can.

[ChicagoLooper]

@camptech 

Check the obvious.......when the drawing was getting wonky and you saved, estimate the time it was save. Look at your last .dwg or last .bak file's time and compare with the wonky save time. Did you save it properly? The latest and most recent Saved Time rules.  

Also, check whether you have an 'AutoSave file.' Go to  time in your Temp fold. The default Temp folder is here:

C Drive/Users/ YOUR NAME/AppData/Local/Temp/DrawingName.sv$

Use RECOVER to open the sv$ file so AutoCAD can check it for errors during the open file.

[camptech]

RECOVER will not allow me to select the .sv$ file?   Do I need to manually copy the .sv$ file to a temporary working folder and rename it to a .dwg?

In any event, the timestamp of that file appears to be too late -- after the damage was done.  I shall endeavour to recall this tip the next time C3D decides to bless me with this feature.

[AllenJessup]

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@camptech wrote:

RECOVER will not allow me to select the .sv$ file?   Do I need to manually copy the .sv$ file to a temporary working folder and rename it to a .dwg?

---

Yes. Then RECOVER it.

[camptech]

Recover ran successfully.  Found and "fixed" 72 errors.  Point Groups were there.  Styles appeared all present.  Points were not.

I do not think this .sv$ file had a timestamp early enough to be of any help.  I think it was created after I had already audited the feature-filled (i.e. corrupted) .dwg file and inserted (& cancelled) two other .dwg files in an attempt to restore point groups and styles.

Thanks for the suggestions.

[TerryDotson]

In my roughly 40 years of computing, I have practiced a few rules and have never lost any amount of significant work, regardless of whether that was a word processor or CAD.

When things are going well is the time to make a backup copy!  Whether you use batch files for automation or manually copy, whenever you have accomplished any semi-significant amount of work take a second to make a copy.  I may have nearly a dozen copies of a file during the course of a day that get moved to a different folder when today becomes tomorrow.  On weekly and monthly intervals move the copies.  As an added benefit I can step back to where I was at almost any point in time and extract content as needed.

Drive space is dirt cheap so there is no excuse not to use it as needed.   So, setup backup automation and make a copy whenever you have accomplished anything.

[camptech]

Terry,

You are preaching to the choir.  The quality of AutoDesk products has taught me to save early, save often.  But today... I dunno.  Guess I didn't.  Ouch.

In my defense, before program locked up, I *DID* save.  Unfortunately, it appears that what got saved was NOT what I wanted.  It appears to have acted like it saved everything as a DXF file (stripping out styles, point groups etc).  BUT no .dxf file was created.  It did save my .dwg file.  Just without any points, point groups or styles.

[user181]

Have you tried using windows explorer and browsing to the dwg file and right click on the file, choose properties and go to the previous versions tab?  Sometimes you can find an old version there you can restore.