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SOLVED!

Autosave files location

Vinicius Lima
Enthusiast

If you have more than one project open, and you have an energy cut/failure, when you restart the computer and Archicad, all projects that were open, appears in that start-page. Great! BUT, you have to choose just one to recover in this moment. To recover the other ones, you have two ways:
1: open the Archicad, recover one project, save, close Archicad, start it again, start-page, choose another, one by one until it ends...
OR
2 (MAC): Finder > Go > Go to file... > ~/library > Application Support > Graphisoft > Autosave-25 folder > Find your desired project ".fdb" file, in between several folder and ".fdb" files... (ohhhh my)!
The 2 solution, I refuse myself to do. So, I only take solution 1, that could be hard sometimes.
It should be great, if these autosave files, appears in "File > Recent Files" or even better, make sense create an exclusive section for autosave files in this "files "menu.

- Vinícius Lima - user since Archicad 12
from Brazil
Apple MacBook Pro 16" 2023 | M2 Pro | 16Gb RAM | macOS Ventura 13.5.2
24 REPLIES 24

OK. I can accept that... Even that it's impossible to somebody discovery that fallowing a rational logic... It's very (VERY) reasonable to say that it should be in a better/easier/friendly place to find. Like: Menu > Open > Open Archicad Project Recovery > (Happy End)

- Vinícius Lima - user since Archicad 12
from Brazil
Apple MacBook Pro 16" 2023 | M2 Pro | 16Gb RAM | macOS Ventura 13.5.2

I do agree that it should be easier.

The only way you could know the last one was from crashes in AC versions prior to the """upgraded""" launch screen since that is how it worked but even then it was not discoverable since AFAIK it was not documented. Also there is no guarantee that this will be the case in the future since most GS engineers give the impression that they don't know how their program works, see the mess they created when they added math functions to the tracker…

Eduardo Rolón AIA NCARB
AC27 US/INT -> AC08

Macbook Pro M1 Max 64GB ram, OS X 10.XX latest
another Moderator

Hi Barry,

What happens if AC crashes, when you go to reopen it you see the autosave file and begin opening it and then for some-stupid-sleep-deprived-reason you hit the close 'x' button as it's trying to open the file. Next time you go to open ArchiCAD there is now no longer an autosaved version of the project available on start up, only a previous version (which when you open it hasn't saved according to the 'ultrasafe' settings I have).

Are you saying there is no autosaved file anymore? What about the fact that I have 'make backup copy' selected?

 

And the project file didn't save according to the settings because...?? I have saved it to dropbox?

As long as you don't click the "X" to remove the file from the "Start Up Screen" it will be there when you relaunch AC again and it comes up.

AFAIK if you don't save the file the autosave rolls back to the precious version, because during the crash that is what becomes the recover file.

----

There is something called user error and there is no way to prevent it. If an user commits multiple errors for whatever reasons it is not the software fault that the data is lost.

Eduardo Rolón AIA NCARB
AC27 US/INT -> AC08

Macbook Pro M1 Max 64GB ram, OS X 10.XX latest
another Moderator

Autosaves and backups are completely different.

As Eduardo said, if you chose to delete or close the autosave, then Archicad will assume you no longer want it and will remove it from the system.

The backup is different, that will be a .BPN file in the same folder as the job (.PLN).

You can simply open this file and then save it - it will become a .PLN.

Or you can rename it from .BPN to .PLN yourself.

A backup file is only as good as the last time you manually saved the file - it will always be one save behind the last save you have done.

 

If you saved it to a Dropbox folder, then depending on your Drobox settings, you may be able to recover an older version of that file?

 

Barry.

 

One of the forum moderators.
Versions 6.5 to 27
i7-10700 @ 2.9Ghz, 32GB ram, GeForce RTX 2060 (6GB), Windows 10
Lenovo Thinkpad - i7-1270P 2.20 GHz, 32GB RAM, Nvidia T550, Windows 11