help! lost interior elevations

[bnix]

last night i left work, saved my drawing, nothing out of the ordinary happened. this morning i came in and all of my interior elevations are lost. the elevation tags on the plans look corupt in some way. They show a circle with a dash inside, but no filled in areas or text as they should show. also, there are numerous randomly placed elevaton tags of this nature floating around that i didn't place there last night. I have no idea what could have happened. they last thing i did before closing the program last night was that i changed the symbol size of the view tags for elevations. i had no problems with this. so, now even the project browser is not showing the interior elevations. This is a lot of work that i've lost and i have a deadline in a few hours! i also tryed to recover a drawing from my backups, but i'm not exactly sure how to do that. i went to the backup folder, made a copy of a .bak file and changed the extention to .rvt and tryed to open. doesn't work but i'm probably not doing it correctly. please help!

[brentcarlson892079]

I'm not sure about the elevation tags... But here is how you recover your backup...

open the folder that has your rvt file. How many files are there? you should have 1 named normally and some will have numbers after the name. Now, copy all those rvt files to your desktop (You will have to replace the rvt file in the original location next).
Then find the second to last file you worked on last night. Copy that file to the original location but change the name to the original name (without the numbers)

Now open the journal files located in Program Files\Autodesk Revit 6.1 (or the version you are using)\Journals

Look at the dates and the one you want is the first time and date after the rvt file you just saved.

Now, if you don't have a shortcut to Revit on your desktop...make one. Open it and if you have a default template come up automatically, your fine. If you don't, then just set one back up in the options.

All you have to do now is drag the journal file over the Revit shortcut and Revit will do the work!

After a bit if it goes smooth, you should have the same thing you had last night.

I hope this is not too confusing,

Brent

[Rhythmick]

My backup files are saved automatically with a .rvt extension. They are named the same as the main file and are followed by a .xxxx.rvt with the xxxx being save numbers in chronological order. I would copy the most recent save and try working with the copy so you don't chance losing the backup also. The files should be accessable through Windows explore to copy the most recent backup and should be available through the Revit "Open" menu.

[brentcarlson892079]

I would copy the most recent save and try working with the copy so you don't chance losing the backup also.
If you use the journal file also, the computer will do all the work.

It's kinda cool to watch also :wink:

[aggockel50321]

All you have to do now is drag the journal file over the Revit shortcut and Revit will do the work!

A while back, trying to meet a deadline, I was deep into a Revit session, and er, ah, ignored the save warnings and kept working.
We had a power hiccup, & the pc shut down.

Does the journal file update after each step, or only when one saves?

This could have helped.

[bnix]

THANK YOU! I GOT IT.

[brentcarlson892079]

Does the journal file update after each step, or only when one saves?
A new journal file is made at the same time as you working. So you could have opened the journal file and let it go to town.

But I have had Revit lock up and I could get back to where I was by using the journal files.
I'm sure that you can use them if your computer crashes also. The journal files seem to be made step by step along with you doing the work.

If I have problems with the journal file playing all the way thru or if I don't want it to...
I will copy the journal file to my desktop and delete what I don't want it to finish.

I had a file freeze up while I was saving it. I dropped the journal file and it froze also.
Then I opened the journal and deleted the part with the save attempt and it worked great!!

[brentcarlson892079]

I found this from last year... Here (http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=536&highlight=journal+recover)

Steve, I have recovered many lost hours of work with journals, you do just drag it on to the revit icon. and it will recreate every step you did that day. There are problems,

1. you need your existing file to be in the state it was when you opened revit that session, the journal file records every command since revit was openned, not just that job.

2. If you opened and worked on other files during the session they will be opened and modified.

so the bot. line is and you should check this out. if you just opened revit, opened your project and worked for a couple hours without saving more times than you have backups, you can use the journal. once you can't rename a backup to be the exact same name and point in time when the journal file started it won't work.

You can also edit the journal file if a specific command caused a crash, you can delete that out of the file before you run it.

Scott Brown
WATG

[aggockel50321]

Thanks Brent.

Very helpful.