I just spent an entire day in Layout on my assignment and saved my work. When I try to open it again, it comes up with an error message “Error Reading Layout file” and won’t allow me to open it. I have attached a One Drive shared link. Can anyone please help? I’m pretty desperate.
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AsNzoIAuE–50Hwq3xOAhxz9XRuF?e=qY8TJG
Thank you kindly,
Liz
Unfortunately that link requires one to sign in. Please change it so we can download your file.
Try this one, I just tested it without signing into onedrive and it worked fine.
The LayOut file won’t open for me either but I’m trying to fix the SU file to see if that will help. So far I’ve fixed the incorrect layer/tag usage…
And purged unused…
CleanUp is running now. Currently says there’s about 29-1/2 hours left to run but hopefully it’s not that long. When it finished I will see if replacing the SU file embedded in the LO file will allow it to open. No promises but we’ll see what happens.
It does look like this file was allowed to get out of control.
I am so grateful for whatever you can recover. Thank you so much for your help.
Also, if you could explain to me if I did anything wrong I would appreciate it.
Kind regards,
Liz
It’s still running the cleanup routine and looks like it’s going to run for awhile, unfortunately.
I’m not sure I can say that you did anything wrong specifically yet. The incorrect layer/tag usage thing is based on the fact that ALL edges and faces should have Layer 0/Untagged assigned to them. Layer 0 in earlier versions, Untagged in the current version. Only groups and components should get other layers/tags. It could have been that components you collected from the 3D Warehouse came with geometry that had been give other layers/tags. Or it could have been something you did.
There is a lot of unused stuff in the Sketchup file that is causing unneeded file bloat. This comes from doing things like trying out components from the 3D Warehouse and then deleting them. The components and their materials stay in the model file even though you’ve deleted them from the model space so they need to be purged once in awhile. The tags that got purged probably came with components that were purged.
Best practice when using components from the Warehouse is to download them into a separate file so you can check them for suitability and clean them up as needed. Sometimes that involves thoroughly gutting a component. If you are going to use components that others made, it’s definitely worth the time and effort to make sure they aren’t too “heavy” and will do what you need before you add them to your model.
We’ll see what happens and I’ll report back. Currently it’s looking kind of grim for getting this finished in time. Still says 27 hrs and 47 min. left.
Again, I am so grateful but very sorry for the trouble. Yes I did bring lots of components from the 3D warehouse and deleted the ones I didn’t want.
I’m not sure how to purge though??
I’m prepared to hold off starting it again in Layout if there is some hope.
I used a plugin from Sketchucation to do it because it shows how much stuff was purged but you can go to Window>Model Info>Statistics and click on Purge Unused.
Unfortunately the CleanUp seems t o have a long way to go.
when I looked inside the LayOut file it seems to show that there’s only one page. If that’s all there is, I would consider starting over on the project based on the short time you have until it is due. At this stage I can’t say for a fact that I’ll be able to open the LO file even after all this. The SketchUp model file will certainly be smaller and this cleaning may be what the LO file needs but the jury is still out.
I hope it’s one page too, but you may have noticed that two of the XML files had no data, and the thumbnail was zero bytes. Even an empty document has more information in those XML files.
I did try copying another file’s XML across, and that did let the file open, but the page was blank of course.
Well, it didn’t take as long as it had threatened to do but I went to bed in the meantime.
Another Purge removed a few more materials.
When that was done the SketchUp file size was reduced by almost 57%.
Colin is correct though. Looking at the XML files, there doesn’t appear to be enough information to create a layout document from it. Sorry. I hope you didn’t wait for me but went ahead and got going again.
I don’t think that the issues in the model would have led to the LayOut file corruption, but you can bet that your version of the file will be less demanding while working with it in LayOut.
Yes. It would be less demanding.
