Vectorworks Crash Recovery Option

[twk]

In the event of a crash it would be great if we had an option to choose from the last Auto-Save file or list of recent auto-saves, instead of navigating to our backup folder all the time after a crash.

 

 

[PVA - Jim]

Request submitted. 

VE-96862

[PVA - Jim]

Adding this to an existing request. Tech Support has been asking for this as well. It isn't simply a convenience though, there is a loop you can accidentally find yourself in if you have Autosave keeping backup copies, and then you go to Recent Files and pick the source file, if you keep that file open longer than the autosave timer, it will overwrite your most recent work and the longer you keep the wrong file open, the further back it will overwrite. This isn't the worst thing in the world since it generally only loses 30 mins to an hour, but if the user HASN'T been performing regular saves at all, it can worst case kill days of work.

[Matt Overton]

Yes this would be very useful. 

[zoomer]

Indeed I keep the VW Backup Folder (local custom path) Finder Window always open

When strange things happen, as they do, I first check if any Backup File has really a newer date
than my Design File. If that's true, I drag (= copy) that Backup File to my current project folder
beneath the drawing file and open VW again with this file.
While examining that Backup File there is no danger to overwrite any of the Backups or Design
File as it already has a different name.
If the Backup was really ok, I finally Save as Design File Name to overwrite the former Design
File.

Beside (3x) VW Backups, Time Machine and monthly mirroring of OS's and Data on extra disks,
I use to copy my Design File from time to time, before larger changes happen, to another
Backup Folder in the Project Path hierarchy by adding Date and Description to the File Name.

 

I'm always happy when the VW Backup was newer than the Design File, because when you open
a Backup File - VW does "something" when opening that file.
That gives hope that VW does repair something, which gives me a better feeling.

Edited September 7, 2016 by zoomer

[PVA - Jim]

There is backup and crash recovery/repair going on in the background, however it does not alert the user at all since we pretty much always want it to happen. Any users who hit the "Corrupt File" situation regularly around the Vectorworks 12.0 - 2009 era have this feature to thank for corrupt files becoming extremely uncommon.

[zoomer]

My other 3D Softwares do automatically ask after restart to allow sending Crash Reports
(independent from Apples Crashlog sent or not)
and ask if I want to open the last Saved Files and Backups, which in that case means it opens the
Design File and imports and repairs missing data from Backups automatically.

Does VW doing similar when I reopen a crashed file ?
For me it looks like it does open that file normally.
Only explicitly opening a Backup File needs more time and recreates or cleans something.
But the won't happen in my case when I see that the Backup File was older so I don't touch it.

Would like to be able to start that cleaning action for my file directly.

The only thing that I know that looks to do anything good to my files is resetting plugin settings

Edited September 7, 2016 by zoomer

[PVA - Jim]

Yes, that feature is explained here:

 

[Art V]

4 hours ago, JimW said:

It isn't simply a convenience though, there is a loop you can accidentally find yourself in if you have Autosave keeping backup copies, and then you go to Recent Files and pick the source file, if you keep that file open longer than the autosave timer, it will overwrite your most recent work and the longer you keep the wrong file open, the further back it will overwrite.

I might be missing something. The autosaved backup has a date/time appended to the filename. If the Autorecovery would open the latest backup would any autosave to backup not be x minutes later than the latest autosave that was used for recovery? Plus that, at least in my case, any autosave backup that got opened and then autosaved would have a double date/time append showing.

Even if you would open the "original" from the most recent files there would still be that time gap for autosave with a new date/time appended and not overwrite the existing one.

So how could things get overwritten? Would the autosave time not prevent this? The only way I can see this happen is if the number is kept autosaves is limited to only a few (e.g. 2, 3 or 4 and a relatively short time between saves).

This is why I usually set the number of backups to be kept to the number of backups per hour times the minimum hours for a day plus some reserve. E.g. if the interval is 10 minutes, this is 6 copies per hour, times 10 hours  to account for a longer working day would be at least 60 backup copies to be kept, I usually set it to 80 or 100 (for a 10 minute interval). Yes this can eat disk space very fast if the files are a bit large, but disk space is cheap compared to having to redo lost work on big files and doing lots of edits. It also allows me to go back to a previous version from earlier that day with minimal updating required if it is decided to quite the current design and start over from a certain point.

[PVA - Jim]

Apologies, I meant that since we DON'T have something like this autorecovery being proposed, the problem I detailed is something that it could solve. Currently you just have File > Open Recent which doesnt show your autosaves which causes it to be an easily made mistake.

[Art V]

Jim, thanks for clarifying.

It brings up a question as well, sorry, but could there be some "jump to autosave folder of last opened/current open file" thingy in the open dialog for when a file crashes, or as in my case I would quickly want to open a previous version without having to mess with recently opened folders? The reason I am asking this is because the automatic folder memory of last opened folders in Windows (and perhaps Apple too) does tend to mess up things from time to time when saving a copy and when I want to open the backup folder it may happen they were saved in a previous other folder and the hunt for the file begins.

Having this quick access to the last used backup folder of a file would be nice. This might require saving some info in the drawing though so I don't know if it would be feasible to do.

[Matt Overton]

16 hours ago, JimW said:

Adding this to an existing request. Tech Support has been asking for this as well. It isn't simply a convenience though, there is a loop you can accidentally find yourself in if you have Autosave keeping backup copies, and then you go to Recent Files and pick the source file, if you keep that file open longer than the autosave timer, it will overwrite your most recent work and the longer you keep the wrong file open, the further back it will overwrite. This isn't the worst thing in the world since it generally only loses 30 mins to an hour, but if the user HASN'T been performing regular saves at all, it can worst case kill days of work.

In the old version I'm using opening a backup file saves a second back-up file of a new name that doesn't overwrite the opened recovery file. Unless this behavour has been changed I don't see it at all as a reason to not auto-open recovery files after crash.

I sure hope it hasn't changed as often crashes can be retriggered in short order.

 

[PVA - Jim]

No the issue only arises if you don't open the backup and instead open the original. Auto opening a recovery file would solve this possible problem.

Currently if used properly there is no issue, but I've had users accidentally forget their backups. The autoopening of a recovery file makes perfect sense.