# unlocking drawings



## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

i have some old autocad drawings, from r12 dos days, and tried to open them in r14 last night, and it said that they had be locked. i remember that this can happen when the drawing was not properly closed, like the app/computer crashed when in the middle of a drawing. i used to know how to unlock them in r12, but can't seem to find the command in r14, and the help wasn't any help. so how do i unlock them so that i can open and use them again. i also has access to acad2000 if thats any help, but not r12 anymore.


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## Inactive (Apr 11, 2005)

when you attempt to open the file what does autocad say? can you open the file at all and does the same error happen if you make a copy of the file?

i've never known autocad to have an ability to lock drawings - there is always 3rd party software involved. in which case i don't know how to resolve. but these password protected software locks should tell you something about what has it locked.

on the other hand, you can try using 'recover'. you can type this at the command line, i'm not sure where it is in r14 - been so long since i've ran it.


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

well, autocad can, and here is the error i get.







once apon a time, there was a menu option for drawing admining so that you could unlock these, but it seems to be one of the many things that got cut from newer versions.


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

well, i got it figured out. it appears that autodesk did infact pull the command to unlock drawings from the newer apps. but the way to get around it is to find a file of the same name, only with a .dwk or .dwl extension, and then delete it. then when you open the drawing, it will run the recover command and fix it up for you to view and edit again.


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## grizzly_uk (Jul 28, 2006)

Sounds like they are using an exploit of their own locking technique...it sort of suggests that at the time when drawing locking was used, it was never quite safe.


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