Viewports Disappear after Scale Entire Drawing

[Alex M]

Hey,

 

I accidentally hit Scale Entire Drawing and then kept working and saved my file. When I reopened it, I noticed the problem, and I tried scaling the drawing back to its original dimension. The Design Layers are now correct, but now all my Viewports are blank like the image attached below. This potentially puts me weeks behind on this project. Is there any way to get the Viewports back to the way they were? I tried looking for a backup file, but the backups have been saved too recently to help.

 

I'm using Vectorworks Fundamentals Version 2021 SP5 (Build 622768) (64-Bit)

Edited September 14, 2022 by Alex M
Update of Version

[Pat Stanford]

It is going to take some work, but you should be able to recover.

 

Select one of the viewports.Edit the Crop. You might need to set the scale to something very small to be able to see where the viewport is  compared to where your drawing objects are. Move the crop object (or delete it and draw a new one) to the location of the drawing. You might need to Zoom in to be able to get the accuracy you need. Refine as necessary.

 

Edit the Annotations. Adjust their location as necessary to match the Crop

 

In some quick tests I did, it appears that it is only a Y (vertical) position issue only. But that might have been pure luck based on the simple file I tested in.

 

Edit the Crop. Write down the center of the Crop Object and then delete it (or Cut it). Exit the crop.

You should now have a very large Viewport with the annotations far offset from the image of the objects on the design layer.

 

Edit the Crop again. Draw a line or a dimension from where the center of the crop object was relative to the Annotations to where the center of the crop object should have been relative to the image of the design layer objects. This will be the amount that you need to move the annotations. Write that value down. Delete the line/dimension and redraw (or paste) the Crop object at the correct location relative to the image of the objects on the design layer. Exit the crop.

 

Edit the Annotations. Select All and Move but the amount you measured above. If you are working in Feet & Inches, make sure to include the foot mark (') in the move dialog box.  Exit the annotations.

 

You should now have your viewport looking at the correct (or nearly correct) position and the annotation close to where they should be, but the viewport will likely be a long way from where you want it. Move the Viewport back to the correct position and you should be done. With that viewport.

 

Repeat with the other viewports.

 

If you write down where the viewport is relatively to the sheet layer prior to moving the crop and annotations, it will be easier to move it back.

 

No guarantee, but my guess is that the amount you will need to move the crop and viewports will be the same for all viewports of the same scale.

 

Tedious, but doable.  Good Luck.

[Pat Stanford]

And now this public service announcement.  Disk space and cloud space are very cheap. Make sure you have a backup/archive plan that works for you. Nothing is backed up until there are at least three copies on two different types of media in at least two different physical locations.  When I am actively working on a project I make a complete copy of the project every morning before I start (or evening when I finish). If you are using referenced files this is a little more chalenging.

 

I run backup software the syncs my HD to an Amazon bucket twice per day. Something like BackBlaze is similar.

 

All of my files are on Dropbox, with local copies. The dropbox local folder is in my documents folder which also get's backed up to iCloud. If you are using Dropbox it does offer some limited version history on files. Since you are on Mac, do you have a TimeMachine backup running that you could recover an older copy from? If not, consider setting that up.

 

As you have learned, you can never have too many archive copies while you are in active project development.

[Alex M]

Hoooooo boy, that was it. The annotations and the crop were just like hundreds of feet away from each other, which made the viewport look blank. Once I realized the crop was in one corner and the annotations in the other, I just zoomed to the crop, dragged it to the sheet, then zoomed to the annotations, cut them, used command+6 to center my view on the crop, and added the annotations back.

 

Thank you so much, Pat, you saved me from a few sleepless night. And yes, hard lesson learned about backups. I'm taking your advice above going forward.

Edited September 15, 2022 by Alex M

[Pat Stanford]

Glad I was able to help. It does feel like a bug though.