"drawing file not valid"

Hi, I did not find any answer in any earlier treads, so:

I have autocad 2002. Now I have a file that says "drawing file not valid" when I am trying to open it. Autocad starts, but the files does not open. It is only worked on in this 2002, never saved by someone else etc, it is the same file that worked well in beginning of september.

Any idea what to do, how to recover it?

Ml Per

Try using the RECOVER command.

Try using the RECOVER command.

Hello,

I tried but it did not work... any other idea?

Per

Download DWG TrueView and see if you can open the drawing with it. It's free at the AutoDesk website.

In similar circumstances, I would do a couple of things.

I would open the file with a text editor (NotePad or WordPad) and see whether the first line was AC1015.

If it was not, then I would convert it with Dwg TrueView.

If it was, I would try starting a new drawing from scratch, and then insert the troublesome drawing as a block and explode.

If neither of those worked, I would come back to CADTutor for further advice.

Hello,

thanks for both your advices. I could not open the file with Trueview though. Said the same thing "drawing file not valid".

Any other bright ideas?

What was the result from my other two suggestions?

Thanks for the advice, it said the same thing though, "drawing file not valid" or similar..

I did not see something like AC1015 when I openend the file with wordpad. Should it be in the very beginning?

I tried to open it with DWg trueview but it said that the file was not valid.

I also tried to put in the file into an other document, a cad file, i did not manage to put it in there.

AC1015 should be the very first characters of the first line when opened in WordPad. The rest of the file should be characters only understandable to the computer.

Time for a redraw.

Time for a redraw.

You mean, that it looks like the file is lost, destoryed and cant be recovered with any mean? To draw it up from the beginning is what you mean?

Did you ever check to see where your AUTOSAVE folder is located, and if you might still have a workable copy there?

Yes I checked in that folder, but for some reason it was nothing there...

I have an earlier file, with some of the work left, but the file that is now crashed has quite some changes in it that I do not want to redo again. I have PDF:s from the latest version, but that is just a picture that I do not see that I can get some splines from. Or do you know how to do that?

No you can't retrieve splines or anything else for that matter from a PDF. You can use the PDF to trace over it that's all. Better start recreating your drawing.

Autosave usually saves into your temporary files folder, but I save mine into a regular folder so that I have to manually delete them.

Make sure you copy that older version onto a memory stick, hard drive, or another location.

When you start working with it use SAVEAS, so it doesn't get overwritten.

Getting your work back from a PDF into .dwg format is not very accurate.

I agree with ReMark.

Ok I see. When I have you here. When I place in something in autocad, that I need to have as "background", i always make them jpg before, since I have never been able to put in PDF. Is it possible to put in PDF in autocad (I have 2002, maybe it has changed now).

If your software is not configured to AUTOSAVE every 10 minutes or so, then I suggest that you do that.

Having never used 2002, I am not sure how to do that on your version.

In recent versions of the software you can attach PDFs, somebody else will be able to advise you on that question,

in the context of your 2002 version.