Riffus Posted March 11, 2016 Share Posted March 11, 2016 (edited) I was happily working on a VWX drawing yesterday and the software crashed. As I always have my preferences set to "Autosave every 15 minutes" and "Autosave a Back-up copy" I thought no problem. But it turned out that the whole document was not saved for several hours. Much time lost. Why is this happening please? Any ideas? VWX Fundamentals 2016 v.SP1 On Mac OS X El Capitan v.10.11.3 Edited March 11, 2016 by Riffus Quote Link to comment
Vectorworks, Inc Employee PVA - Admin Posted March 11, 2016 Vectorworks, Inc Employee Share Posted March 11, 2016 Where do you have the file saved originally? On the local machine, on a server, or in a cloud sharing folder like Dropbox? Did you perform an original save to start with once you set the document up? Or was it never saved manually? Quote Link to comment
Riffus Posted March 11, 2016 Author Share Posted March 11, 2016 Thank you for your quick reply. You have slightly got me there on both questions: - I am not on a server, but I have been moving things from my computer to and from Dropbox - so that is a possibility. - The "original save" is also a good question - I take it this is 'a must'. Your questions may be leading me to the answers so if you could clarify - particularly re: using Dropbox - I would be most grateful. Best regards Quote Link to comment
Vectorworks, Inc Employee PVA - Admin Posted March 11, 2016 Vectorworks, Inc Employee Share Posted March 11, 2016 I have had a number of users reporting issues when saving (especially auto saving) to dropbox, but these were mainly crashing or long save time problems that COULD have been related but I think it wasn't the main cause of the problem here. I suspect your issue was the lack of the first save, the first save is indeed mandatory or autosave does not start. I believe this incident could have been avoided on our end by making autosave prompt the user for the first manual save of the document at the first interval, I'll add this thread to that existing feature request now. Quote Link to comment
Riffus Posted March 11, 2016 Author Share Posted March 11, 2016 Many thanks Jim! Quote Link to comment
Riffus Posted April 29, 2016 Author Share Posted April 29, 2016 Can I revive this item .. because I just worked on a VWX file on my computer (i.e.: not on Dropbox) and did an hour of work. It then crashed (often crashes on saving - does anyone know why??) And left no "back-up" version (anywhere) even though my preferences are set for auto-backup every 10 minutes. All suggestions most welcome. Quote Link to comment
Vectorworks, Inc Employee PVA - Admin Posted April 29, 2016 Vectorworks, Inc Employee Share Posted April 29, 2016 When was the first time you performed a manual save in that file in that session? Is that the modified date and time on the original or is it different? Quote Link to comment
Riffus Posted April 29, 2016 Author Share Posted April 29, 2016 Thanks Jim, I have to say I am baffled because I am a regular manual saver but somehow I had lost an hour's work. I had secured some saves on that session because some of my changes are there. Then there is this business of the crashing itself. Which happens very frequently and it happens when I do a manual save. But not every manual save. Any thoughts much appreciated. Quote Link to comment
barkest Posted April 29, 2016 Share Posted April 29, 2016 You can often get crashes with a big file saving to a memory stick Quote Link to comment
Riffus Posted April 30, 2016 Author Share Posted April 30, 2016 The file in question was only 840 kb I was saving to my desktop Quote Link to comment
Ajams Posted September 5, 2016 Share Posted September 5, 2016 I too have had this happen - today I worked on a survey till midday saved then "saved as" to a new document (to start separate sketch drawings on top of the survey) worked on it all afternoon and had a crash about 4:00. I have lost the survey drawing work (from the morning) and the sketch drawing does not even exist! The back up has the survey from Friday's work (none from today) and there is no backup for the sketches. Now the really confusing thing is I "saved as" and worked on the sketch drawing for an hour then closed it, shut down VW and went for lunch. Came back opened VW AND my sketch drawing with NO problems. So it definitely was there! So the only conclusion I can come to is that VW has crashed and then deleted the sketch, survey and back ups!! my settings - back up every 5mins, save to folder in same place, don't ask to save, no Dropbox etc any help would be welcomed! Quote Link to comment
Kevin McAllister Posted September 5, 2016 Share Posted September 5, 2016 I have seen some weirdness with Autosave at times. I personally would recommend using number of operations rather than time. This guarantees you're not in the middle of a tool/command when it saves. Mine is set to "Autosave every 20 Operations". I also recommend saving the backups to a different folder/location. All of my backups go into one central folder for a couple of reasons - so I can see at a glance that autosave has been saving when working on multiple projects/files, so i can easily delete backups when they are no longer needed and so I don't need to hunt around to find a backup. Kevin Quote Link to comment
Art V Posted September 5, 2016 Share Posted September 5, 2016 (edited) Something I have noticed at times when trying to save/copy/delete files is that if Windows is indexing files or generating a preview it may not (auto)save etc. depending on the autosave settings. (e.g. if there is only one backup copy used), until Windows releases/unlocks the file. It is similar as if the file would be in use by another application/Vectorworks instance or be read only. Autosave will fail but not always provide a notification. Maybe Vectorworks should get an option to notify the user if an autosave could not be performed/completed? Edited September 5, 2016 by Art V Quote Link to comment
Jeremy Best Posted December 12, 2018 Share Posted December 12, 2018 On 3/12/2016 at 4:43 AM, Jim Wilson said: I believe this incident could have been avoided on our end by making autosave prompt the user for the first manual save of the document at the first interval, I'll add this thread to that existing feature request now. I've just verified this feature has not yet been added to Vectorworks. (As at Vectorworks 2019 SP2) 1 Quote Link to comment
mjm Posted December 12, 2018 Share Posted December 12, 2018 1 hour ago, Jeremy Best said: I've just verified this feature has not yet been added to Vectorworks. (As at Vectorworks 2019 SP2) thanks for the heads-up Quote Link to comment
Jeremy Best Posted January 16, 2019 Share Posted January 16, 2019 On 12/12/2018 at 5:08 PM, Jeremy Best said: On 3/12/2016 at 4:43 AM, Jim Wilson said: I believe this incident could have been avoided on our end by making autosave prompt the user for the first manual save of the document at the first interval, I'll add this thread to that existing feature request now. I've just verified this feature has not yet been added to Vectorworks. (As at Vectorworks 2019 SP2) Hey @Jim Wilson, if you think it might help, can you please reignite or bump this feature request? It seems like a pretty small/easy think to implement and offers great potential benefits / time savings of work lost. Quote Link to comment
Vectorworks, Inc Employee PVA - Admin Posted January 17, 2019 Vectorworks, Inc Employee Share Posted January 17, 2019 16 hours ago, Jeremy Best said: Hey @Jim Wilson, if you think it might help, can you please reignite or bump this feature request? It seems like a pretty small/easy think to implement and offers great potential benefits / time savings of work lost. This should already be happening, I think I had Vectorworks prompt me about this the other day. Let me check and make sure. Quote Link to comment
Jeremy Best Posted January 17, 2019 Share Posted January 17, 2019 5 hours ago, Jim Wilson said: This should already be happening, I think I had Vectorworks prompt me about this the other day. Let me check and make sure. Cool, thanks. I'd prefer to be wrong in this instance! 😁 Quote Link to comment
Jeremy Best Posted April 26, 2019 Share Posted April 26, 2019 (edited) Hi everyone, I have just confirmed that as of at least Vectorworks 2019 SP3; Vectorworks now prompts users to save new files - if they have yet to do so - when the first autosave process occurs. (No autosave can occur / No backup files can be created, unless the file in question has been manually saved by the user). Edited April 26, 2019 by Jeremy Best Added screenshot Quote Link to comment
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.