All project's components in hierarchy disappeared after a project is removed.

Hi,
I am new to Unity 3D. I just install the latest Unity3d version 5.2 and try learning it. There is a BIG problem I just found.
1) I am learning from reading the Standard Asset Example project as well as creating a simple new project my self.
2) Whenever I remove a created project ( by removing the project directory using window explorer), all the remaining projects , including the Standard Asset Example project (which I only read, never modify anything),
will have problem that all the components in the hierarchy window disappeared except for the Main Camera and Directional Light.
3) I've try removing the Library subdir in the the project directory, to force unity3d to rebuild the projects .but no luck. I've to re-install unity3d from scratch in order to have the projects back to normal.

Should anybody advise how to fix or at least avoid this to happen , otherwise it it too dangerous to use unity3d for serious works.

Thanks in advance.

 

geez, this is a pretty bad problem. I have no idea what is happening to you, but for what it's worth:

this has never happened to me, so it's not an intrinsic flaw with Unity, more like something specific to your setup.

 

I haven't looked at the standard assets example projects since... er... maybe ever? So I'm merely speculating here, but those are probably installed somewhere within Unity's own file hierarchy, and perhaps set up so that many of the files are shared, for efficiency. By deleting one project, maybe you inadvertently deleted these shared assets, causing Unity much confusion.

Of course this doesn't happen in general... I've deleted projects many times, and have never seen this problem. So either it's specific to your setup, as @jhocking suggests, or it's particular to the specific project(s) you deleted, perhaps because they were samples or some such.

I would suggest you contact Unity support, because they'll certainly want to hear about this... but also press on, and see if once you get to just creating your own project, this issue goes away.

 

Thank to your replies. I've just found out what is wrong. It is a silly mistake for a newbie to Unity3d like me.

I just forgot to re-open the scene. The IDE of unity3d remember the last scene your have opened in a project, and automatically open it when u start unity and open the project again. However, if u have ever switched to another project, and switch back to a previous project, it will always open the project with the default scene (i.e. untitled). I have to open the desired scene manually.

Thanks again.

 

That was going to be my suggestion. Unity does have bugs. But they are buried pretty deep in the engine. Most of the time when you are getting started it's a simple misunderstanding of the intended behaviour.

 

Actually, it won't always open the default scene in new projects. What Unity is remembering is the name of the scene, so if the new project also has a scene with the same name, Unity will open that one. But yeah if there isn't a scene of that name then it just goes to the default scene.

Anyway glad you figured it out.

 

Kudos for coming back and posting the resolution, in case anyone else stumbles on the thread who was doing the same thing!

 

So that's what it's doing! I've never understood why sometimes Unity sometimes starts with a scene open, and other times starts with an empty Untitled scene. It must be cases where I've used "MainScene" in two projects, and just switched from one to another!

That's a pretty useless behavior, and it forces me to let go to the my desperately-clung-to belief that Unity sometimes actually remembers where I left off and attempts to reopen to the last used scene, but at least now I understand.

Thank you, @jhocking!

 

Well in fairness it's not completely useless. It's quite handy when you are opening the same project you were last working on (which is the majority of the time) but does get a bit confusing when switching.

 

Yeah — I tend to switch projects a lot every day.