Recovering from a crash

[sgleadleD3EMJ]

So I was working in my ongoing site drawing today which consists of about 7000+ 3d solids. Its a large scale industrial site that I have modelled from blueprints. I have a few hundred hours in it. Out of no where I got the Fatal Warning error and it crashed but prompted me to try to save it which I said yes. After it closed, when I tried to open it I get the suggestion to recover and when I do this it deletes almost everything (see pic). When I try to open the _recover it says it can't open it. Any ideas on how I can get my data out? 

[rl_jackson]

I don't thing Civil 3D is the place to be drawing 7k+ solids. Maybe you should be using Revit or something else for this task.

[Neilw_05]

When it crashed you affirmed you wanted the software to create a recover file. However the recover file was not successfully created, so you lost a certain amount of work up to the crash. However you likely can go back to the original file and take up from where it was last saved. Considering there may be corruption in that file too, the best way to open it is with the Recover tool. It will look for errors as it opens the file and in most cases will fix them. You find the Recover tool under the Drawing Utilities option in the file open dialogue. Ignore the recover files that you will see in your folder and open your working file. You will see a message when it opens if it finds any errors. Also, after you have opened the file, run Audit 2 or 3 times to see if it finds any more errors. Then save it.

[m_kingdon]

Do you have a .bak file for this drawing? Also do you have autosave enabled?

If not I hope you have backups. There have been a few occasions where a model I have been working on has completely failed and is unrecoverable. For this reason we backup any files changed on our server overnight.

[Shea_G]

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@Neilw_05 wrote:

When it crashed you affirmed you wanted the software to create a recover file. However the recover file was not successfully created, so you lost a certain amount of work up to the crash. However you likely can go back to the original file and take up from where it was last saved. Considering there may be corruption in that file too, the best way to open it is with the Recover tool. It will look for errors as it opens the file and in most cases will fix them. You find the Recover tool under the Drawing Utilities option in the file open dialogue. Ignore the recover files that you will see in your folder and open your working file. You will see a message when it opens if it finds any errors. Also, after you have opened the file, run Audit 2 or 3 times to see if it finds any more errors. Then save it.

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I did that and it deletes almost everything. (See the first screenshot I posted)

[Shea_G]

I tried the .bak, no luck there. Same problem. I’ve been using this same drawing every day for 8 months now. Weird that almost everything was corrupted.

not sure if my server backs things up, it may. I do have an older ifc of it, maybe I can get the solids from there.

[Shea_G]

I disagree with the comment about revit being more suitable. This is a coordinated civil project with a relatively low amount of faces and has performed flawlessly until today. I’ve had the same issue in a 2D simple drawing with civil. That’s why I’m hoping there may be a way to recover the data that’s still in there somewhere.

[Neilw_05]

Ok, I wasn't sure from your description whether you were opening the original or the Recover. First thing to try is open it with plain Autocad. Often times the corruption is related to a Civil 3D component and the file will open in plain Autocad.

If that fails, the next step would be to use Map to query the drawing into a fresh new file. You could try to query everything at first. If that fails, then try querying in subsets (i.e. by layer, object type, spatially). If that fails you might try DWGTRUECONVERT to an older version. Of course that would probably mess with your C3D objects and any other non-standard components, but at least it isn't a total loss.

[andrewpuller3811]

You can also check in you temp folder. Civil 3d often saves temporary copies of open drawingsin the temp folder, often several times a day.

To get to the temp folder

1. open windows explorer 
2. enter %temp% in the address bar and hit enter

You will find that there are files with the extension .bak, ac$, .sv$, .tmp which will have names that start similar to your drawing name and are around the same size. 

You may have to change the options in windows explorer to "Show hidden files, folders and drives" and uncheck "Hide extensions for known file types" so that these files are visible.

Change the name to dwg on the end and try them in Civil 3d.

%temp% should take you to C:\Users\<your username>\AppData\Local\Temp