Recovering accidentally deleted design

[jasonwebb]

I just deleted a bunch of rendered images that were placed in my project root by default by Fusion 360, and I found that I accidentally deleted the main project file as well. It looks like my file is now gone forever, with no possibility of recovery - is that true?

I switched to Offline mode, but it seems that by default no designs are backed up locally unless you explicitly do so (none of the designs in any of my other projects are available either, despite having worked on them for months). 

I found a ###.f3d._xx file in my local AppData cache, but it was only 3kb and is not recognized by Fusion 360 when I try to open it (after changing extension back to .f3d). 

I also poked around the A360 web app and found no obvious UI features that would allow me to locate and restore deleted or changed files from history.

In another forum post there was some indication that a "recycle bin" would be made available by the end of summer 2016, but we are well past that now, and I wonder if that ended up not being implemented after all.

Is my design (and all of its previous versions) truly gone forever? Is there anything that can be done by an Autodesk rep to restore a backup on the server-side? Or do I really need to completely re-do my entire project (several weeks in the making)?

[mike.tessier]

Hi @jasonwebb,

Thanks for posting and welcome to the Fusion community!

I'm sorry to hear accidentally deleted your project from your data panel! It sounds like the project may just have been archived - if that's the case, then recovering the project should be easy enough.

First, you should navigate to myhub.autodesk360.com and sign into your Autodesk account. Once you get signed in, you should see a "tab" at the top that says "Archived" (see image below for clarification). 

Once you click into the "Archived" tab, you should see your project listed there. There should be a button right next to your project that says "Restore". This *should* cause the project to re-appear within Fusion - you may need to do a refresh of the data panel to see the project re-appear.

If that doesn't do the trick, I'm going to need a little more information to troubleshoot this. Would you be able to send me you diagnostic log files? To collect these, click the "?" in the upper right corner of Fusion and select Diagnostic Log Files from the dropdown. That will package up everything I should need to see into a zip file that can be attached right to your reply.

I hope this helps! Thanks in advance for the information and please let me know if you have any questions or concerns - I am always happy to lend a hand!

Cheers,

[jasonwebb]

Actually I deleted the main design file in my project, not the entire project itself. The majority of my projects only have one or two design files in them that I work with, along with renders or screen captures that I generate. I still have all my other files, just not the design file I need.

When I go to that website and click on my project, I do not see any "Archived" tab there. Only on the main page where you select a project.

In the attached diagnostic file zip package I see a familiar folder that I looked in to try to find my design file - the ...\W.login folder. Inside of F\W.login I see a couple files containing my design files name (Large), but they are very small and I don't imagine they are my ACTUAL design files. If I remember correctly, I did find a larger file (around 4MB) with this name in this folder on another one of my active workstations, but when I tried to open it in Fusion 360 I just get a generic error with a prompt to send an error report.

[mike.tessier · Accepted solution]

Hi @jasonwebb,

Thanks for getting back to me and for sharing those logs! My mistake - I had misinterpreted your previous post.

To clarify, if you had deleted an individual design rather than a whole project, the design will not appear in the "Archived" tab within A360. To get that design back, I'm going to have to enlist the help from some members of the cloud ops team to see if they can dig into the back end and get the design back.

I'll circle back here once I have something to share - I anticipate that that should be within the next couple of days.

Cheers,

[mike.tessier · Accepted solution]

Hi @jasonwebb,

Thanks for being patient with me!

Just heard back from the cloud ops team, and they believe that the design might still be in your local cache. Could you try to create a "New Design From File"? When you create a "New Design From File" you should be brought into the file explorer for your OS. In that file explorer, you should navigate to the below directory.

C:\Users\<user name>\AppData\Local\Autodesk\Autodesk Fusion 360\B34DLU9Q3K6A\W.login\F\_Large.8086e9a2-21c4-401f-8de1-2788de8e7707.f3d

The only caveat with this is that you will lose the design's version history.

I hope this helps! Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns - I am always happy to lend a hand!

Cheers,

[jasonwebb]

That worked! Thanks!

[mike.tessier]

Hi @jasonwebb,

Thanks for getting back to me! Excellent - I'm glad to hear that that brought your design back!

Good luck and happy designing!

[Anonymous]

Hi Mike - I have the same problem, but when I try this in the current version I get an Error: "New design cannot be created from a local file containing external references". 

Is there a way around this problem, or another solution for recovery of deleted files?

Thanks, Greg

[Anonymous]

Solved this using File:Upload... and selecting file from the cache as per above descritpion. This worked as per https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-360-support/recovering-accidentally-deleted-design/m-p/7352128

How did I delete my file? After creating some renders, all this pics were saved to project folder, and as they all looked the same as the design file I just selected them all and deleted. Having just recoloured the design file threw me off, I was expecting the design file to be grey as per its original colour scheme...

So, a way to recover form the cloud for 90 days - somehting like Dropbox offers - would be great.

Thanks, Greg

[Anonymous]

Can you help me, i am also facing same issue, accidentally i deleted my complete project file named New Project_d