.swap file?

[Andy Broomell]

The most soul-crushing crashes are those that are caused by the act of saving. I had just rendered 8 viewports, so I hit Ctrl+S, which caused Vectorworks to crash. 

 

What I'm curious about, though, is a file that I now have alongside my project file (which didn't save, of course), called "RB-v2-VWTMP.swap". What is it? Obviously it's a temporary file used in the process of saving, but just curious if there's anything else to know about it.

 

Does it have anything to do with saving to Dropbox or is that not relevant in the situation?

 

[ScottL]

I have had similar issues - crash followed by a new file with the .swap extension.  It just happened again, but this time my original .vwx disappeared (going back to an earlier version).  I am also looking for any information about this phenomenon and recommendations for avoiding/remedying this issue.

[KevinC]

I was able to open the ".swap" and it was right where I left off?

 

I Call Vectorworks and they say it is a 'temp file" that is made if there is a problem saving a file.  

[twk]

On 5/8/2018 at 11:05 AM, KevinC said:

I was able to open the ".swap" and it was right where I left off?

 

I Call Vectorworks and they say it is a 'temp file" that is made if there is a problem saving a file.  

 

This has been happening three times now today.. Are there ways to figure out what the problem is of saving..?

[Nicolas Goutte]

May-be you could try to update to VW 2018 SP4.

 

I do not know for sure in case of saving files, but there were similar problems with the same kind of symptom when exporting symbols to library files (by code). And we cannot reproduce such problems any more with VW 2018 SP4.

Edited July 13, 2018 by Nicolas Goutte

[Mark Aceto]

I just discovered 10gb of these files that populated in 5 days from the same drawing.

 

I created a smart folder to track them, so I can delete them before I run out of hard drive space.

 

However, I may automate the deletion process with a Hazel rule.

 

 

 

 

Edited December 5, 2020 by Mark Aceto

[zoomer]

Hmmh,

I don't have ".swap" files on my local SSD.

Did you ran above your physical RAM ?

[Mark Aceto]

@zoomer that seems to be the case from what I’ve researched here in the forum.

 

My internal hard drive is on a “diet" right now, so I was confused how it lost ~10gb of free space, and then I was surprised to randomly discover 10gb of temp files that were created in less than a week.

[Nicolas Goutte]

On 12/5/2020 at 9:16 PM, Mark Aceto said:

I just discovered 10gb of these files that populated in 5 days from the same drawing.

 

I think I have written it somewhere in this forum already (but I have not time to find it)

 

VW saves first a drawing to a temporary file, delete the destination file and then moves the temporary file to the destination file.

 

In case something goes wrong in this process, files may stay behind.

[zoomer]

10 hours ago, Mark Aceto said:

@zoomer that seems to be the case from what I’ve researched here in the forum.

 

My internal hard drive is on a “diet" right now, so I was confused how it lost ~10gb of free space, and then I was surprised to randomly discover 10gb of temp files that were created in less than a week.

 

Hmmh, I think the meaning of TEMP files is temporary, that they disappear

from time to time. Maybe after an OS Reboot only ?

(As we Mac users don't do so that often)

 

If these *.swap files persist, I would think that does not work as designed.

[Nicolas Goutte]

 

1 hour ago, zoomer said:

 

Hmmh, I think the meaning of TEMP files is temporary, that they disappear

from time to time. Maybe after an OS Reboot only ?

(As we Mac users don't do so that often)

 

As far as I know, macOS deletes only files in the standard temporary folder on reboot, which according to the screenshot above is not the case.

 

Quote

If these *.swap files persist, I would think that does not work as designed.

Yes, sure if they are kept, it is that something is wrong. Something is refrain the files to be deleted. On Windows, it might be an antivirus, permission (You can set delete permission separately on NTFS) and a few others. Curios that this happens on macOS, however, and not even on a folder on a server.

Edited December 7, 2020 by Nicolas Goutte

[Mark Aceto]

At first I thought it might be from the dreaded “Force Quit” scenario but I definitely didn’t do that 166 times in 5 days.

 

I also have 120+ versions of a pano that I was exporting to VW Cloud Services, so I’m wondering if these files are generated during every single export. That could be complete coincidence though.

 

It may have been 166 times that my machine exceeded 3.5gb of memory while previewing (“pre-flighting”) RW views at the lowest setting before exporting.

 

Either way, I’ll keep an eye on that smart folder moving forward.

 

Edited December 7, 2020 by Mark Aceto