What to do if your model file gets corrupted

What to do if your model file gets corrupted.

Advance Steel is a complex piece of advanced software. Like all advanced software you are inevitably going to get the occasional crash. Unfortunately, these crashes can sometimes corrupt the model you had open at the time so that you cannot open it again. When this happens, you need to recover a back up or auto-save file. However, if you don’t do this in the right way you will lose the links to all associated drawing and documentation you may have created from the model. What is the right way to recover your file?

RULE #1: Don’t use the AutoCAD Drawing Recovery Manager.
When AutoCAD crashes you are offered the Drawing Recovery Manager the next time you open the program. If you use this to select a version and open your model the model will never again link to any exiting drawing or documentation. This is because the Recovery Manager actually takes a copy of the selected file and creates a new file from it. Since the file you open is not the original file it will not link to the documents. You must not use this tool if you want to be able to maintain links to existing drawings and docs.

Try Recovering the current file.

Sometimes the current file can be opened safely with a slightly different command. Instead of clicking the file in the recent file list or using the Open command try using Application Button (A at top left) > Drawing Utilities > Recover > Recover. If this works to open the file great.

Recovering Auto-saves or Backups

If the current file cannot be opened with Recover, then you will have to go for an Auto-save or a Back Up file.

Back up files are made every time you manually click save. The previous master file becomes the backup. So, if you save at 10:00 and again at 10:05 the 10:00 file becomes the backup. If you then save again at 10:20 the 10:05 file becomes the backup. Thus, is it a good idea to save twice before closing down AS at the end of the day to make the backup file match the master file.

Auto-saves are done in the background without user intervention. There is a setting in AutoCAD options for the interval between auto-saves. Due to a slightly strange behaviour however, this interval does not mean much. Your latest auto-save is likely much older than the stated interval. There is nothing a user can do about that. We don’t recommend setting this interval to less than about 10 minutes as it can start to cause problems.

You will need to locate the most recent of the back up and auto-save files. To do this you will need to be able to see the file name extensions in Windows Explorer. In Windows 10 you can tick the “File Name Extensions” and “Hidden Items” boxes on the View ribbon of Windows Explorer.

The back up files are in the same path as your master model file but they have a *.bak extension instead of *.dwg. The default path for auto-save files is the system Temp folder. You can access that by typing %temp% into the path bar of Window Explorer (see image above). There are often thousands of files in this location but you are interested in the ones ending *.sv$. The file name will start the same as your model name and then have some random letters and numbers after it. There may even be several versions with a similar name. You are most likely interested in the latest one. In the image below there are three different Drawign1 auto-saves so I need to find the latest one that I have circled.

Once you have located a file that you want to try you need to rename the file so the extension is DWG not BAK or SV$ (e.g. Drawing1_1.dwg). then you can open that using the normal open command in Advance Steel and check if you are happy with the model contents.

Replace the master model

Once you have found the best and most up to date file to recover you will want to replace the master model with it but not lose the links to any existing documents and drawings. You do this as follows:-

• Close all files in Advance Steel
• In Windows Explorer rename the existing (corrupted) master model e.g. Drawing1_bad.dwg
• MOVE (do not copy) the recovered file into the original model path if needed.
• Rename the recovered file to the original model name – Drawing1.dwg.
• Now open the recovered file in Advance Steel
• Check Document Manager to see if the links to all the files are still there. (Not likely).
• Output > Document Manager > Register Documents to Model. Select all files in the Details folder and click open.
• Repeat the Register for all files in the BOMs and DSTV folder as required (don’t forget to change the “Files of type” setting in the Open dialog accordingly).

All links to all your file should now be restored. You will now need to redo any lost work on the model and update the linked files as required.