When Civil 3D locks up or crashes

Last updated: 2015-06-03

Follow these steps to restart your session:

  1. You may first need to use the Task Manager to end the current session of Civil 3D.
  2. Make sure all sessions of Civil 3D are closed.
  3. Restart Civil 3D using the Civil_3D_2014_WisDOT icon on the desktop.
  4. Once Civil 3D has completed the initialization startup process the Drawing Recovery Manager should be open.

    • If the Drawing Recovery Manager does not open go to the Drawing Utilities in the File pull-down menu and select Open the Drawing Recovery Manager

  5. Select every file or file grouping in the recovery pane, use the right-mouse-click menu, and delete.
    • There should be no need to keep this list populated. Ignoring this step because you do not know where the other drawings in the list came from is meaningless. If you do not know, who does? These are specific to your computer user profile.
  6. After you have deleted all the files and groupings listed, or if there were no files listed, close the Drawing Recovery Manager by pressing the X.
  7. Close Civil 3D. Make sure all sessions of Civil 3D are closed.
  8. Open the Windows Browser and type %temp% in the path field.

    • This will set the path to your local user folder.
  9. Select all the files in this folder and delete them. If you get a message that a file cannot be deleted, select the option to skip the file.
    • Browse to C:\WisDOT\Stnd\Temp, then select all the files in this folder and delete them
    • Optionally for the two previous steps, if you have the ClearAutodeskCache tool on your desktop or in C:\WisDOT\Stnd\C3D2014\Appdata\Profiles\Shortcut use this tool. It will do the previous step automatically.
  10. Empty the Recycle Bin, after verifying any other files already in the trash are not needed.
  11. Open Civil 3D.
  12. At the Command Line key-in RECOVER. In the dialog that appears, select the last current drawing you were in when Civil 3D locked or crashed, and choose open.
  13. Save the drawing once recovery is finished.
  14. Repeat the last two steps one at a time for each drawing that may have been opened when the lock or crash occurred.
  15. If the original drawing had xrefs attached to it, review the source drawing of each xref to ensure they can be opened by repeating the steps 12 and 13 on these drawings.

If you experience a crash again at any point through these steps, start from the beginning of these steps. If you are still experiencing frequent crashes, contact DOT CAE Support at DOTCAESupport@dot.wi.gov

You should now be able to work on your drawing again. Choosing to not work through these steps lessens your ability to be productive.