Opening DWG closes CAD

[Wolfgirl]

Good morning everyone. I have a doosy here.

Received a set of drawings from a client but ever time I go to open one of the drawings it gets almost open and CAD closes for no apparent reason without giving any error message. I do have Error Reporting on but nothing ever happens when CAD closes so I don't know what's going on there. The file was originally created in Architectural Desktop, but has been manipulated in Vanilla CAD before getting to us (Architect -> Electrical -> Us). Our company is currently using CAD '06.

Here's what I've done so far, please let me know of anything else I can do.

1) Open drawing in '06 on 3 other stations around this office as well the stations of 2 people in an office out of state. All get have the same result of crashing CAD.

2) Requested/Received 4 separate copies of the drawings from the client to date. Two on CD, two on a thumb drive. The first two (on CD) they merely copied over the drawings, the third they performed both recover & audit to make sure nothing was wrong with the file, and the last time they detached all missing xrefs (there is one xref still overlaid, and it's in the same directory as the file I'm trying to open). The final two times I was in the guy's office watching him play with the file before copying it over to my thumb drive so it's working fine for them. None of the copies I have work on any of our stations though.

3) Tried to recover the file using '06. Gets almost open and CAD closes just as if I'd been trying to open the file regularly.

4) Open file on my home system (CAD '05), the file opened fine. Performed audit, purge, and recover. No errors, and few things that were deleted. This new file wouldn't open in '06 at work though.

5) Open file on home system and detach final xref. This file didn't work with '06 either, it stills makes CAD close unexpectedly.

6) Open file on home system and explode -> all about 5 times. Copy/Paste selected information into a new drawing file. This file will actually open in '06 but the drawing is so cluttered with exploded blocks that manipulating the files becomes extremely cumbersome. Example being that every column in the building (up wards of 50) becomes 3D objects that unfortunately don't match anything (upper and lower Z coordinates vary form column to column), and when you perform the "flatten" command on the drawing it not only sets all Z coordinates to 0, but also sets all objects to layer 0 which pretty well defeats the purpose. The you have literally hundreds of blocks with attributes that were exploded and we all know what happens there...groan.

If you've made it this far, here's the technical information on my station. Win XP Pro, Intel Xeon CPU 2.80GHz with 1GB RAM. Using a network version of CAD'06.

If you have any ideas or suggestions as to what else I can try to get this issue resolved I'd really appreciate it. I've been searching both the AUGI and AutoDesk sites for the past 2 hours trying to find something that would help but haven't found anything yet. Am I missing something obvious?

Thanks in advance!!!


Wolfgirl

[Opie]

Have you tried the Recover / Audit on your machines? Have you tried inserting the drawing into another drawing? Have you tried to XREF this problem drawing into another drawing? Has a partial load been attempted?

There is probably other things, but I can't think of them just yet.

[Wolfgirl]

Have you tried the Recover / Audit on your machines? Have you tried inserting the drawing into another drawing? Have you tried to XREF this problem drawing into another drawing? Has a partial load been attempted?

There is probably other things, but I can't think of them just yet.

Thank you Opie. Yes, I've tried all of the above. Each time it gets within a hairs breath of doing what I want and CAD closes down on me. (Quite frustrating let me tell ya!!!) In fact these drawings that are crashing CAD are the base architectural drawings that are xrefed into and a main electrical drawing. I can open the electrical drawing but can't touch the xrefs. Performed an etransmit on that main electrical file, specifying all xrefs to be bound. In that new file the xrefs are blocks, but the moment I try to manipulate that block CAD closes on me again.

Wolfgirl

[Opie]

Have you used the command line version of purge to purge regapps? I don't know if that would solve it, just a guess.

[Wolfgirl]

Have you used the command line version of purge to purge regapps? I don't know if that would solve it, just a guess.

I've purged (applications too), audited, recovered and detached all xrefs from the original file using my personal '05 version of CAD and saved that file, but when I try opening that new file at work using '06, the file still makes CAD close down before it can completely open.

Wolfgirl

[Mike.Perry]

Hi

Maybe try...

Jan '05 - TIPniques: Disaster Recovery

Feb '05 - TIPniques: Disaster Recovery 2

Mar '05 - TIPniques: Disaster Recovery, Part III

Apr '05 - TIPniques: Disaster Recovery w/ 2006

Have a good one, Mike

[Wolfgirl]

Apr '05 - TIPniques: Disaster Recovery w/ 2006

Have a good one, Mike

Once again you've made my day Mike!! After trying everything else the above link led me to this one, and all the way at the bottom it reads:

Object Enablers If your drawing, or parts of it, were created in a later version of AutoCAD, or in one of the vertical products that is not installed on your computer, you will receive a message when you open it saying that proxy objects will not be displayed. If this is the case, Autodesk offers free downloads of software called Object Enablers that will allow you to view and manipulate, but not change, these objects. To have any ability to modify them, you must purchase the software in which they were created.

Thinking it couldn't hurt (oh alright, so it was out of pure desperation) I downloaded/installed every Object Enabler for CAD '06 I could find, and I can now open those files!! Never had a proxy that crashed CAD, but that seems to be what was happening. Only thing I can surmise is that there are so many Proxy's in these particular drawings that CAD would become unstable and close out of self preservations...but that doesn't explain why it works fine using Cad '05 without any Enablers installed. Anybody else have a theory on this?

Thanks again for everybody's help in this!!!! all around!!!!

Wolfgirl

[Mike.Perry]

Once again you've made my day Mike!! After trying everything else the above link led me to this one, and all the way at the bottom it reads:

<SNIP>

Hi Wolfgirl

Thank you... and no worries...

Good to see you worked through all the information offered and managed to find a solution that worked for you.

Mike