Nuke Tool Does Not Complete, Runs Extremely Slowly, or Crashes AutoCAD

Issue

You attempted to clean a drawing using our Nuke tool, but the tool was:

• Unable to complete, or
• Extremely slow, or
• Crashed AutoCAD

Cause

Although the Nuke tool is meant to clean corrupt files, the drawing file has such a degree of drawing corruption that even the Nuke tool is unable to process it.

This issue can also result from Xrefs that are inserted into a drawing as blocks – not a practice we recommend.

Solution

1. Follow our steps to export a clean version of your drawing (Step 12 of our recommended manual drawing cleanup steps).

Close CAD, open the resulting -CLEAN file, and try running the Nuke tool again.

Still having issues running the Nuke tool? Move on to the next step.

2. Your next step should be to run the Audit command. Type Audit in the Command line, and press Enter.

3. The Command line will prompt: Fix any errors detected? Type Y for Yes.

If the Audit command is unable to run, or it crashes AutoCAD, you can try running the Recover command by typing Recover in the Command line and pressing Enter. If the Recover command is unable to run, the file unfortunately has such a level of corruption that will likely render it unusable.

4. If the Audit command is able to run correctly, run the DELREGAPPS command. Type DELREGAPPS in the Command line and press Enter.

4. Now run the Nuke tool again to clean out any Proxy Objects. If Nuke runs successfully, you've fixed the issue and cleaned the drawing.

Still having issues running the Nuke tool? Move on to the next step.

5. If you're still having trouble running the Nuke tool, try the following steps:

• First, turn on and thaw all layers.
• Next, select all layers.
• Finally, run the WBLOCK command on your entire drawing, then write it to a new file. You should be able to run Nuke on that new file.

You'll find that some consultants have better workflows than others. For example, a consultant may send you a drawing file that was created several years ago. (We've seen clients have issues trying to clean a consultant's drawing, only to find that the drawing file was 10 or 12 years old, or even older.) If this is the case, you can almost guarantee that the consultant hasn't updated his or her methods in a few years. If so, you should use these steps every time you receive a drawing from that consultant.

Drawing corruption is completely preventable. Follow our steps to prevent drawing corruption to prevent corruption in future files and protect yourself from losing work.