Autosave

Hi Everyone, I've noticed the discussion about Autosave for Mac is almost 2 years old to the day. Apologies if I've missed a more recent discussion but does BricsCAD have an autosave function as I've just lost 7 HOURS WORK.......and spent 2 hours crying as a result. Please tell me there is a way to recover the entire days work. A don't anybody DARE tell me I should have 'qsaved' more often!
Cheers, MandyT

Comments

  • Sorry, but 7 hours? How can you not save for 7 hours?

    Always QSAVE after every action you don't want to lose.

  • The answer is simple rkmcswain, You have been a Forum member since April 2017 and posted 66 comments over that time. By my reckoning this 'should' qualify you to be an ADVANCED BricsCAD user although 19 months shouldn't be long enough for you to forget the novice position from whence you started your journey. If like myself, you had done a small amount of research on the forum member you were about to post a comment to then you 'MAY' have been able to deduce from my new and ONLY posts in "Beginner Tutorial" that I'm relatively new to CAD, hence offered a constructive piece of advice with quantified justification as opposed to the one you have posted.
    Kindest regards, MandyT :/

  • And as a general follow up to my above posts, can somebody PLEASE explain to me why, if this forum can 'autosave' my post text every 30 seconds or so WHILE I'm typing, then how on earth can it be so difficult for BricsCAD to not have the same facility programmed into their applications. If this is so difficult then the BioMed Science I'm studying must be akin to rocket science for simple folk. (No offence intended to simple folk)
    MandyT

  • You have auto save in BricsCAD and mine is set with 60 minutes intervals. This you can change under Settings > Program options > Open and save. I have never change anything after installation, so 60 minutes is a default.

    The difference in auto saving some text in a blog is very little data compared to what you might get in a drawing. So, auto saving with too short intervals might feel disturbing to your work.

  • The command SAVEFILEFOLDER opens the folder where automatically saved documents are stored.

    By default the target folder is a temporary location generated by OSX.
    Another target folder can be chosen by means of the BricsCAD setting SAVEFILEPATH.
    The interval between automatic saves can be controlled with the setting SAVETIME.

    While this mechanism works, it would be far better to support the OSX builtin Autosave feature.
    We are aware of this shortcoming, and work has started recently.
    Yes, it's been years that we wanted to implement this, but so it goes, we have to deal with priorities.
    Since there is a lesser alternative in place, this task is easily pushed forward.

    @rkmcswain said:
    Always QSAVE after every action you don't want to lose.

    Mind that this is a matter of habit.
    On OSX it is common for programs to save continuously.

  • I am very happy to hear this ^
    Thanks Tijs.

  • rkmcswain
    edited October 2018

    @MandyT said:
    The answer is simple rkmcswain, You have been a Forum member since April 2017 and posted 66 comments over that time. By my reckoning this 'should' qualify you to be an ADVANCED BricsCAD user although 19 months shouldn't be long enough for you to forget the novice position from whence you started your journey. If like myself, you had done a small amount of research on the forum member you were about to post a comment to then you 'MAY' have been able to deduce from my new and ONLY posts in "Beginner Tutorial" that I'm relatively new to CAD, hence offered a constructive piece of advice with quantified justification as opposed to the one you have posted.
    Kindest regards, MandyT :/

    @MandyT - this has nothing to do with CAD and/or your self-declared novice status. The nature of the computer application does not matter. If you do something you want to save, whether it's CAD or a photo editor, or a word processor, or authoring an email -- then you save it. Never rely on an application to save it for you, or the situation you are in - happens. Is your data something you don't want to lose? Then make sure (at whatever cost you are comfortable with) that you have your data. For me, this means running QSAVE perhaps as often as after every command for complex operations, but generally every minute or so.

    The same can be said for backups. (e.g.: Did your harddrive crash and it's unrecoverable? Where are your backups? I don't have any...) <---- I've seen this on many occasions....

    Having said all of that, BricsCAD does have an Autosave facility, but it is meant to bail you out in case of a power outage, or catastrophic crash, when you (the user) don't get an opportunity to save that one last time. It creates a copy of your current drawing in the location defined by SAFEFILEPATH. at an interval defined by SAVETIME. (Running your own save command resets the timer). It does not regularly save the current open drawing file. I don't think doing this is a good idea anyway, because there are many occasions you might open a drawing with no intention of saving it and you would not want changed automatically written to disk.

    Sorry if my post was offensive, and I should have included my last paragraph here, in that reply.

  • Just hit Crtl+S frequently - that saves, like in any Windows application

  • Hi All, sorry for the delayed response to your posts. Have been snowed under with Uni exams. Taken all advice on board. Thank you everyone. Yes BricsCAD APPEARS to have the built-in auto-save that has a default setting of 60 minutes but it would appear my original 7 hour stint without a qsave has that function Beta-tested for a fail. I've since not been game to put it to the test with constant qsaving. HOWEVER............ I've recently had the displeasure of discovering a process called 'Undoing Conversion' in the Command Line. The arrival of this has brought with it all manner of grief including but not limited to, deleting and/or moving imported blocks. Deleting and/or moving my own created block groups that range from 7 to 63 grouped line entities and even changing simple arcs and circles to tangent lines and dodecagonal line shapes. I tried to Save As to a backup drawing to create a not-so-damaged version of what I was doing but It is bastardising that as well. I have searched the forum for 'Undoing Conversion' and cannot find a match. PLEASE tell me someone knows what this is and how to fix it.
    Kindest regards, MandyT.

  • .......PS- Screenshot of the offending function.
    image

  • When loading a drawing into memory, the content typically is converted into the most recent dwg format.
    When saving a drawing to disk, the content is converted back into the desired dwg version, e.g. 2010 or 2013 or 2018.
    At a certain point, the ODA Teigha libraries ( = the dwg libraries used by BricsCAD ) were modified to make this 'under the hood' conversions visible to the user, by printing a message on the command line.
    These messages only seem to introduce confusion for non-programmer users, so soon after their introduction, we decided to suppress them, instead of being helpful they merely are distracting.
    Apparently the BricsCAD version you are using belongs to the range that printed this message.
    Please rest assured it is harmless and as expected.

  • Hans De Backer
    edited November 2018

    Further clarification:
    if you save to dwg 2013 format, while the in-memory representation uses dwg 2018 format, the in-memory content is temporarily converted to 2013 format, then saved, and after saving, there is the 'undoing conversion' message while reverting the in-memory content back to the dwg 2018 format.

  • Thanks Hans but I have 2 questions....... I'm using the 2018 version of BricsCAD and have created new from scratch drawings except for one group of blocks that I downloaded and used. I haven't knowingly saved to a dwg 2013 format so firstly why would my system be saving like this and secondly why, since this problem started, has it been removing sections of my drawing be it imported blocks or my own created blocks that have been saved as groups (so zero physical link to the imported blocks) and splitting and/or grouping them and placing them in completely random locations in my window even well OUTSIDE of my inputted drawing limits for this project?
    Kindest regards, MandyT

  • The SAVEFORMAT setting controls the default format used for saving drawings.
    For BricsCAD V18 the default value for SAVEFORMAT is 4, which corresponds with dwg 2013.

    Concerning the problems you experience with a certain drawing: if you file a support request and attach the drawing, our analysts will be glad to investigate and help you out. Really.

  • A side note to "Save As"

    I tried to Save As to a backup drawing to create a not-so-damaged version

    I think Save As is a bit dangerous when used to create a "Backup".
    When you work in File_A and want to create a Backup of the current state
    and "Save As" File_B,
    a) File_A's changes will not be saved that way
    b) File_A gets closed and your active File is now File_B
    (So you go on working in your Backup instead)

    So I try to save my Version States from Finder/Explorer

    • Save file in Bricacad
    • go to Finder
    • "Duplicate" or ALT+Drag and Rename

    But Save as is fine for saving things like imported Files and such, because
    you can control Path location, rename to your standards and even overwrite
    other Files when needed.

  • Thank you Hans, I don't really have a choice as it now seems to be just deleting and/or relocating all of the changes I make to the drawing.
    Kindest regards, MandyT

  • Thanks Michael, That makes sense but originally I closed the 'Backup' as soon as I created it. Now whatever has happened seems to have corrupted both of the files as the changes are occurring to both even when opened and worked on separately. I'll send a support request as Hans suggested and hope and pray that I can recover even one relatively recent version.
    Kindest regards, MandyT

  • @Hans De Backer said:
    For BricsCAD V18 the default value for SAVEFORMAT is 4, which corresponds with dwg 2013.

    Interesting. Why is the default save format, set to something that is not the current, most up to date, file format?

  • rkmcswain
    edited November 2018

    @Michael Mayer said:
    A side note to "Save As"

    I just realized that the "SAVE" command in BricsCAD does not do the same thing as the "SAVE" command in AutoCAD.

    "SAVE" in BricsCAD is the same as "SaveAs".
    In AutoCAD, "SAVE" writes to the chosen drawing name, but does not make that drawing current. Ref: http://cadpanacea.com/wp/?p=697

  • Hmmh, for me on Mac,
    Save, CMD+S or qlsave do work as expected.
    Just save the current File.
    (Or "overwrite" the last File State with the latest changes)

    But I see that the Command Line offers a lot of other "Save" options
    that I want to not even know of.
    :smile:

  • Why is the default save format, set to something that is not the current, most up to date, file format?

    The differences between dwg2013 and dwg2018 are really tiny, making one wonder why this file format change was introduced.
    By keeping dwg2013 as the default save format, exchanging drawings with other parties is less of a hassle, not enforcing everyone else involved to immediately upgrade to 2018.

  • ^ I have always thought of this in the same way.
    I think that is a wise decision.

    I also tumbled over this when new DWG 2018 was announced
    but I saw the standard in Settings default to DWG 2013.
    Thought for a moment about changing to DWG 2018 but realized
    it is good that way.

  • @Michael Mayer said:
    Hmmh, for me on Mac,
    Save, CMD+S or qlsave do work as expected.

    To clarify, I did not say SAVE didn't work as expected, just that it is different than SAVE in AutoCAD.

    Having said that, one of the goals for Bricsys is to make the transition from AutoCAD to BricsCAD easy, so I would think that having the same named commands perform the same function would be a desirable thing. Then again, you could interview 100 AutoCAD users, and perhaps only 2 or 3 would even know the difference between SaveAs and Save anyway.

  • rkmcswain
    edited July 2019

    @Hans De Backer - I just noticed today that when BricsCAD is shut down, all of the .sv$ files, and .bak files that correspond to the .sv$ files are retained in the %temp% folder. This will be fantastic news for customers coming from AutoCAD, where the .sv$ files are deleted and the .bak files are no longer even created.

  • @rkmcswain said:
    I just realized that the "SAVE" command in BricsCAD does not do the same thing as the "SAVE" command in AutoCAD.

    "SAVE" in BricsCAD is the same as "SaveAs".
    In AutoCAD, "SAVE" writes to the chosen drawing name, but does not make that drawing current. Ref: http://cadpanacea.com/wp/?p=697

    I reported this as far back as V12 (SR 3229). I guess it doesn't create that much issue otherwise others would of reported? I would expect that it may interfere with some LISP that expects the AutoCAD behavior.

    Regards,
    Jason Bourhill
    CAD Concepts

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