[solved] previously good file looks all weird

[m0n5t3r]

Hi all, first post here, not sure where this belongs, but risking it anyway: I am on the 0.17 freecad-daily PPA, and I have a design file I worked on a while ago (also on 0.17) which suddenly looks all mixed up (like, the sketches and the bodies and the names and the solids are all out of place - it was a neat tree when I last closed the thing 1-2 months ago); I would attach it here, but apparently 6 MB is too much for this forum

The funny part is, freecad would crash like every time I closed a sketch back in the day, but it would open the file just fine after restart, and I just got into the habit of pressing ctrl+s after every change.

Now when I open it it looks like this:

Screenshot from 2017-02-04 12-50-04.png (118.34 KiB) Viewed 1167 times

Is there any chance I'll ever get this to open correctly again, or should I redo it from scratch? :-/

OS: Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS
Word size of OS: 64-bit
Word size of FreeCAD: 64-bit
Version: 0.17.9945 (Git)
Build type: None
Branch: master
Hash: 709d2f325db0490016807b8fa6f49d1c867b6bd8
Python version: 2.7.12
Qt version: 4.8.7
Coin version: 4.0.0a
OCC version: 6.8.0.oce-0.17

[ickby]

There was a change in PartDesign that broke existing files created with 0.17 which lead to the tree behaviour you see. You can try to drag and drop the features back into the body, either one after annother in the correct order or all at the same time. With some luck this will work. Apart from that you may be able to edit the file manually in a editor to make it work again (if you did not override it already).

That are the hassles of using a developer version, we do not care about file compatibility within a dev cycle, only to previous versions.

[m0n5t3r]

Can you point me in the general direction of what I need to change? I already figured that the fcstd files are zip archives with a bunch of binary files and an XML one inside, I guess the problem is in the XML, right?

in the worst case scenario I'll reverse engineer the mesh files to get by dimensions back (good thing I didn't get to publish the thing to youmagine, as I was intending...)

I don't mind file format changes, but a conversion script might be a good idea; I guess I should stick to 0.16 format files, then?

[Jee-Bee]

I can remember there was or is something from 0.16 to 0.17 format change. but i doubt if there is something with the previous 0.17 format to the format now

[ickby]

in the App xml file you will find properties named "Model". You need to rename that to "Group". Thats all.

[m0n5t3r]

that fixed it, thanks