CAN I DELETE SCRATCH FILES

[Fritz T]

I have just found a whole series of files named "Scratch ..." followed by a series of 10 digits on my hard drive, located in a subdirectory of the "Archicad Cache Folder".
Does anyone know, can I delete these with safety?

[TomWaltz]

As long as you are not in Archicad at the time, yes, you can delete them.

[Fritz T]

Just as a matter of interest, what function do these files serve?

[TomWaltz]

They are just temp files that Archicad writes. Most software writes files like that for various purposes for all kinds of purposes.

I suspect they are the 2D content of your sections and elevations, but I could be way off base.

[Fritz T]

Given the name of the subdirectory I assumed it to be a temp cache file, but surely it should clear once you quit Archicad, or there should be a setting to enable that function.
Would you by any chance know if this occurs on PC as well?

[TomWaltz]

Archicad should clean those out by itself when it closes. I usually found those after a crash.

Once in a while, I just notice a whole pile of them from scattered dates and clean them out.

I would not be at all surprised if this is a general problem, not unique to an operating system.

[Fritz T]

Ok, thanks for taking the time to reply.

[Anonymous]

Fritz -

Don't know if I would be quite so cavalier about deleting Scratch Files. Have you tried opening one? Is it a layout book file? We have had a 'permissions' problem which routinely results in Layout Book files saving in this format, rather than over-writing the previous file.

Sometimes this doesn't matter because views will update themselves within an old layout. But if you've added a new layout or annotated a layout in any way within Plotmaker (e.g. a revision note), these changes will be lost. Consequently, on spotting a 'Scratch' file, we would have to find the layout book it represented, check the 'save' time/date, delete the layout book, and rename the scratch file as the layout book.

[Fritz T]

Hi, thanks for pointing that out, I've just moved them to a different directory, and then tested current layout books, no problem experienced thus far that I can notice. They seem to have accumulated for the past 18 months, and have taken up up to 10gb of hard disk space. So if they're not essential I would really like to junk them. Will try the re-naming and then open to view.
Will update this forum with any developments.