How to repair a Civil 3D drawing showing signs of corruption

Autodesk Support

Jul 19, 2024

Products and versions covered

Issue:

A drawing has become damaged or corrupt in some way, and shows one or more of the following symptoms.

  • File will not open.
  • File hangs or crashes AutoCAD.
  • Slow performance when editing and manipulating the file.
  • Error message when opening or when working in the file.
  • Some commands do not work or have a considerable delay.
  • Unexplained file size increase.
  • Display/Regen problems.
  • Drawing elements missing.
  • Colors do not look like they are supposed to be.

Causes:

Corrupted drawing. 

Solution:

How to clean and repair a Civil 3D drawing file (.dwg)

  1. Open your drawing and type WBLOCK in command line.
  2. Select Entire drawing and location where you would like this Block to be placed (desktop).
  3. Start a new Civil 3D drawing from acad.dwt or other template (DWT with preloaded styles, settings).
  4. In Settings tab, assign coordinate system, units, and scale identically as from your original drawing.
  5. * Optional: Run IMPORTSTYLESANDSETTINGS command to import all your styles and settings from your original drawing.
  6. Then INSERT (or CLASSICINSERT) the WBLOCKED file you created in step 2. Check the option to "Explode" upon Insertion.
  7. To get layout tabs you right-click on layout tab in the drawing and used “from Template” option to import DWT or DWG file. Choose your DWG file. This will insert layout tabs into your drawing.
Alternatively, you can use the Design Center to copy the layouts to your new drawing per: Copy objects and style information between drawings in AutoCAD.
  1. Run AUDIT, -PURGE (RegApps), PURGE and save the drawing.

Note: If your drawing contains mostly Civil 3D data, you may repair/rebuild your drawing per: To Export Drawing Data to LandXML and To Import LandXML Drawing Data.

Products:

Civil 3D;

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