How to open an auto save file?

[Rick Thompson]

(or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb)

I just had an interesting experience, which brought up something I haven't considered before. I managed to delete about 2 hours of work somehow. (I am on a beta 12, and not the final release.. I think I found a bug:( Anyway, I could not go backwards and undo it, so I was screwed.. basically. I tried to open an auto save file, but could not. Then.. I remembered a bug in stairmaker, so in as few steps as I could, I crashed AC on purpose. I was then able to open AC and prompt the autosave feature, which got me back. If I didn't know how to crash it, I would have really been up poop creek, as someone was waiting on the work to be sent to them right then.

So, in leu of being able to intentionally crash AC, is there away to open an auto save file? If not, I will put it on the wish list. It could be sort of a fail safe mechanism aka Dr, Strangelove.

[Anonymous]

Hello Rick,
What was your method for crashing Archicad ?
Thanks,
Peter Devlin

[Rick Thompson]

I should be gone in the final release, so it want be of any help. There "was" a bug if you tried to edit a stair and it was selected in elevation.

[__archiben]

you don't have to find a bug in the program to be able to crash it deliberately - you can just force quit it (kill process) like any other badly behaving application: CMD + ALT + ESC

as long as archicad exits without using its own 'quit' process, the autosave data will be there to read the next time around . . . (i've done it myself on more than one occasion! )

~/archiben

[Rick Thompson]

Oh.. force quit will trigger the auto save:) great. I assumed to trigger the auto save dialogue you needed AC internally to end the deal.

thanks

[__archiben]

Rick wrote:
Oh.. force quit will trigger the auto save:) great. I assumed to trigger the auto save dialogue you needed AC internally to end the deal.

looking for autosaved content is a part of its startup routine: i.e. when you launch archicad anytime it looks in the autosave folder. if it finds data there you'll get the file recovery dialogue.

if archicad 'quits' properly, that process cleans out the autosave data so there will be none for it to find on the next startup . . .

[Chazz]

~/archiben wrote:
as long as archicad exits without using its own 'quit' process, the autosave data will be there to read the next time around . . . (i've done it myself on more than one occasion!

Me too.

I also wanted to add that Time Machine is a fantastic addition to the Archicad workflow (though I understand not necessarily in Rick's exact situation). I have in the past reverted to TM backups and have felt so good that it was there. It is fast and convenient and does what it promises.

If you are on a Mac, get Leopard and use TimeMachine. You'll be thankful.

[JaredBanks]

Instead of force quiting you can always just turn off the computer. About once a month, while working and rocking out to my headphones, I tap the power strip and kill the power. The first time I did that... wow was I freaked out. Thank goodness for the autosave!

[Dwight]

Wouldn't the forum be more fun if we all had nicknames like gangsters do?



These nicknames would derive from our avatars or writing:

"Thinks he's funny" Dwight
"HaironFire" Rick
Karl "the Monk"

So, to:

"Flailer" Banks:

Have you moved the power strip out of harm's way, yet?

ie: "the first time i did that" implying that it happened more than once?

[JaredBanks]

It's happened maybe 2-3 times. That I can think of. I moved the power strip once, but geography is against me so there's really no good place to move it to. I'm learning to be more careful with my flailing (drafting-dance or is it draft-dancing?). It's better than a long time ago in an AC 9 180 mb+ teamwork file when a coworker thought he unplugged his power strip, but it was really mine. That was more of a pain...

I just need a laptop.