I am working in a team group on this file (Dropbox - ENTAC-10-30.skp - Simplify your life) and we had the “unexpected file format” issue after downloading a component of the 3D warehouse. I took a look on the forum and it looks like a possible solution would be uploading the file here so that @colin could take a look and fix it… Could you help us Colin? If it doesn’t work would anyone else know another solution or at least a way to prevent this problem? thank you very much!
Hopefully Colin will be able to recover your file for you. In the meantime you might look for the .skb version of the file in the same folder as the .skp is saved to and see if it can be opened.
There have been numerous reports of corrupted files when they are saved directly to the cloud. Do not work on files saved directly to DropBox. The user should download the file to their local drive to work on it. They should be saving to their local drive and only upload back to DropBox when they are finished or ready to sync the file.
As for 3D Warehouse components, it’s a good idea to download them into a separate SketchUp session so they can be inspected and cleaned up or repaired if needed before inserting them into the project.
Also make sure the users are regularly purging unused components and materials from the models to avoid file bloat. The larger the file the longer it will take to sync to DropBox and the more likely an interruption in the connection could cause file corruption.
Thank you very much for the help! we will adopt these best practices now…
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As you may have read elsewhere, most times I am able to recover anything I only get the components and materials in the model, there is nothing to be seen in the model space. You would need to look at the components tray to see if there are any components you can use to rebuild the scene.
That’s the case for your model, here is what I managed to recover:
Thanks Colin!
Unfortunately the components on the tray aren´t enough to rebuild the model. One thing that is curious is that when I move the file a preview of the model appears althoug the model space is empty…
But I guess it´s just a memory of what the model has been, and not that the objects are hidden or something like that…
The preview is just an embedded image.
To prove that there’s nothing hidden in the model space, go to the View menu and turn on Combined Hidden Entities. Then press Ctrl+A to select all in the model space. Look to see what is selected in Entity Info.
Another way to know the scene is empty is to look in the Outliner. That shows there is nothing in there.