We value your input!
Please participate in Archicad 28 Home Screen and Tooltips/Quick Tutorials survey

Modeling
About Archicad's design tools, element connections, modeling concepts, etc.

Autosave

Anonymous
Not applicable
We've had a couple of instances recently where Archicad crashed, and, after restarting, there was no prompt to open Autosaved Data.

Okay, we thought, go find the Autosaved file, rename it and open it. I'm sure this has worked in the past. But there appears to be no recognisable file in the specified path.

I note in ArchicadHelp that 'Opening the Autosaved file at this point (i.e. from the restart dialogue) is the ONLY way you can recover Autosaved data' If this is the case, and if it's a new development, then it seems to be a retrograde step. What use is Autosave if you can't get access to the Autosaved file?

I saw James Murray's suggestion for saving backups, which sounds interesting, but looks a bit beyond me.

Any comments, anyone?

KEITH

Release 10 on Mac 0SX 10.3.9
8 REPLIES 8
Anonymous
Not applicable
With Autosave "On" when AC saves files, it makes a back-up file, with extension .bpn. Open the .bpn file and you will get your crashed file with 15 steps lost.

No need to rename anything! Old AutoCad habits die hard! 😉
data safety.jpg
Anonymous
Not applicable
Thanks Kliment.

I thought the .BPN file was created only when you consciously save the .PLN file, and would therefore be more out of date.

This is useful information.

KEITH
TomWaltz
Participant
kliment wrote:
With Autosave "On" when AC saves files, it makes a back-up file, with extension .bpn. Open the .bpn file and you will get your crashed file with 15 steps lost.

No need to rename anything! Old AutoCad habits die hard! 😉
Sorry, but that's completely incorrect.

The BPN is created when you press the SAVE button. It is the previous PLN file.

The autosave feature keeps a series of files in a Temp directory on your computer (exactly where depends on your OS, on Apple it's under ~/Library/Application Support/Graphisoft/ArchiCAD AutoSave Folder)
Tom Waltz
Anonymous
Not applicable
Tom -

Thanks - this is where I came in. Although we all have Autosave properly set, none of us can actually find a file to access in the path which you quote, although I'm sure that I used to do this in earlier versions.

As I said, the Archicad Help entry implies that this is no longer possible - you can only access the file through the dialoge box. Is this the case?

(Today the file which we had been searching for in vain miraculously reappeared when Archicad crashed a second time. This time, on restarting, the dialogue box came up - offering the recovered data which had been saved before the first crash and over-writing all the manual repair work which had been done in the meantime!)

- KEITH

Release 10, Mac 0S 10.3.9
Link
Graphisoft Partner
Graphisoft Partner
.bpn files are creating when hit Save, as long as you have 'Make a Backup Copy' checked under Data Safety in the WE.

The Autosave will save (as long as it you remain idle long enough for the bulldozer to disappear from your status bar) to a file called @Global.T. This file is saved to the AutoSave folder as set in the same Data Saftey dialog. On my PC the @Global.T file is stored at C:\Documents and Settings\Link\Graphisoft\ArchiCAD AutoSave Folder.

This file will exist as long as ArchiCAD is open and an AutoSave has had a chance to save. If ArchiCAD closes correctly it is automatically deleted. If ArchiCAD crashes, it remains there and ArchiCAD will look for it upon opening. When it finds it, we're prompted with the 'ArchiCAD Project Recovery' dialog which asks if we want to open that file or delete it.

At any time the @Global.T file is there, it can be renamed with a .pln extension and opened like a regular file.

Well that's how it's all supposed to work!

Cheers,
Link.
Anonymous
Not applicable
Thanks, Link. I guess '@Global.T' is the answer I was looking for!

- KEITH
Anonymous
Not applicable
So, if you have two or more sessions of ArchiCad open on your computer are there two or more Autosave backup files. And with multiple sessions open can AC be trying to Autosave at the same time.

I have had AC10 freeze-up many times in the past few weeks and each time I see the "Autosave pending 04 sec.... to the right on the Status bar. Today I had two sessions open and it froze, other days I do not remember if I had more than one session open.
Barry Kelly
Moderator
Jay wrote:
So, if you have two or more sessions of ArchiCad open on your computer are there two or more Autosave backup files. And with multiple sessions open can AC be trying to Autosave at the same time.

I have had AC10 freeze-up many times in the past few weeks and each time I see the "Autosave pending 04 sec.... to the right on the Status bar. Today I had two sessions open and it froze, other days I do not remember if I had more than one session open.
Version 8.1 (and earlier) would save only one temp file regardless of how many Archicads you had open.

Can't say for V9.0 as I never used it.

V10 will save a temp file for each open instance of Archicad.
I'm not sure though if the autosave doc will show up if you still have the other sessions of Archicad running.
Touch wood I have never had reason to find out.

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