Audit and Recover Drawing Files

Today’s post is delayed since I spent the morning at the repair shop waiting to get my car fixed. While I waited, it occurred to me that cars aren’t the only things that break down sometimes…drawings can too.

If you have a drawing giving you trouble (whether it’s the equivalent of an annoying noise under the hood or a full-blown breakdown on the side of the road), there are two commands you can turn to for help: Audit and Recover.

Audit can be run on open drawings. Auditing a file generates a description of the problems present and recommendations for fixing them. But if you say “yes” to the “Fix any errors detected?” prompt, AutoCAD LT will go ahead and fix them for you. Any objects with errors are placed in the Previous selection set for easy access, and a log file is created if AUDITCTL is set to 1.

Not all errors can be fixed with Audit, which is why there’s also Recover. Before you run Recover, you have to close the affected file. It’ll open up again when the command is finished. “Recover with Xrefs” (highlighted in the image above) included any referenced files in the recovery process. Some things to remember when using that option:

• Drawing files are saved in the current drawing file format.
• Copies of the original drawing files are saved as BAK files.
• If the object enabler is present, custom objects are updated.

The results of the recovery are displayed in the Drawing Recovery Log window.

Each drawing file checked includes a Drawing Recovery Log that can be expanded or collapsed. The entire log can be copied to the Windows clipboard with the Copy to Clipboard button.

Examples of things that can be fixed with Audit and Recover are invalid block or layer names, errors in the internal database, missing xdata, that sort of thing. Typically they’re things that you’d never think twice about (or even once), until you start seeing errors in your drawing.

So remember Audit and Recover the next time you have a drawing in need of repairs…I guarantee they’re faster than the average mechanic!