Brand newby, already made one mistake posting, I need help with lost layout dwg.

I have lost the dwg in layout 1. When I hoover over the tab a thumbnail of the real dwg appears but when I click, what appears is not my dwg. It looks like model space with a white background. I can't change the drafting preferences. If I plot this weird "other" dwg, the dwg I was working on does plot.

I appreciate all of the help you nice people can give me. I visited a few sites and you all seem like very nice folks.

Thanks,

Larry

Can you post a copy of the actual drawing so someone here can take a look at it? It would make things a lot simpler.

Just a guess but while in the layout type PS, enter, zoom, enter, extents, enter.

Thanks for replying. I don't recall being inside a viewport in the layout when whatever happened, happened. I have X-Ref'd features from another dwg into model space of this dwg. Again when I hoover over the tab, a thumbnail of the dwg I was working on pops up, but then I click and what I get looks similar to this dwg's model space except the X-ref'd features don't seem to be there, and the visual set-up is different. If indeed I am inside a viewport in the layout, how do I escape it when I don't have anything to dbl clik on to exit it? Your thoughts...

Thanks rkent. When I type in PS it tells me I'm already in paper space, and zoom>extense just fills the space with what I don't want. I can't return to the dwg of the thumbnail that pops up when I hoover over the layout tab. You'd think I'd get what's on the thumbnail when I click on the tab huh?

So make the viewport current (double click over the viewport, not on the viewport edge) type SHADEMODE, enter, 2D, enter. Any better?

Even though the view when I click on the layout tab looks like it's a different view of model space, I'm in paper space. So shademode just tells me I can't set a visual style in PS. When I dbl click on the layout view it tells me to specify other corner, and with the background being white, I can't see the crosshairs or anything except the colors of bldgs I have X-Ref'd. I can't change any of the settings of this view in the options dialogue box either. I keep thinking that if only I could click on that thumbnail before it fades away, I could get into that dwg. Maybe if I increase the curser speed...

I'll be out of the office until Monday 3/12/12 but please keep sending me your ideas on this matter. I really don't want to start over on this project. ReMark, I just spotted your post, but we're closing up the office. I'll resume on Monday. Until then--Where are you, those with wisdom and courage? Those who strive and shine in the spirit of helping others? I honor and respect you.

It sounds to me like you have some outlying virtual flotsam in your modelspace, and your preference set to automatically create a viewport in your new layout, which is fine. Click into your LAYER dropdown list and check to see if you have any layers (perhaps the one upon which the viewport is located) VIEWPORT FROZEN or LOCKED.

double click over the viewport

When I dbl click on the layout view it tells me to specify other corner

If that's what it says, you did not dbl click over a viewport. But I guess if you can't see the crosshairs...who knows what your clicking..

And if you can't go to the display tab of options and change colors, or turn off 'display paper background', it's hard to say what to try.

I'm just guessing here, but maybe you have something xref'd or drawn active in your layout space which, when zoom-ing extents, takes you far away from the actual viewport so you can't see it.

Do you have a border xrefd in the layout? If so, can you see it? Do you typically show the space outside the paper size as white?

I don't know if there's a way to zoom to the page setup/paper size, but I guess you could do zoom-window and enter 0,0 as the first point and the other corner as the other point (like 34,22 for 22x34 paper size). Maybe you could then see where your viewport/paper is. All of this is entirely based on assumptions of course...

p.s. I would abandon the idea of the thumbnail when hovering. It could just be that someone else modified and saved the drawing. The little preview you get might just be what it looked like the last time you were in it (before someone else modified).