Make .pln and .bpn Windows file icons more distiguishable

[Anonymous]

Please make the standard Windows icons more distinguishable. Like completelety red .bpn icon instead of the tiny red arrow.

[Lingwisyer]

You could sort by file type instead of name. In doing so all of your .pln files will be grouped seperately to your .bpn files. You could also probably remove the default program for .bpn files within your system settings which should change the icon for them to a blank white page or with a bit more fiddling, replace the default icon with one of your choosing.



Ling.

[Barry Kelly]

I make sure to turn off the option to "Hide extension for known file types" in the file manager settings.
At least this way you see the ".BPN" and ".PLN" extensions.

Barry.

[Lingwisyer]

I make sure to turn off the option to "Hide extension for known file types" in the file manager settings.

First thing I do on a fresh install. =D

[felcunha]

Piet_vannie_kalahari wrote:
Please make the standard Windows icons more distinguishable. Like completelety red .bpn icon instead of the tiny red arrow.

I agree ! Often my students and architects I teach don't pay attention to which is each and open the .bak instead of the .pln.
They don't have to be experts on Windows (sometimes they event don't have the rights to do it)...

[Josh Verran]

From my limited understanding, isn't most software set up to automatically associate a "hidden" attribute to these background file types?
Therefore by unticking hidden files in windows, these file types don't show up?

[Barry Kelly]

Josh wrote:
From my limited understanding, isn't most software set up to automatically associate a "hidden" attribute to these background file types?
Therefore by unticking hidden files in windows, these file types don't show up?

This has nothing to do with 'Hidden' files.
A BPN file is a backup file - not a 'background' file (I assume it stands for Backup PlaN).
BPNs and PLN are both visible (non-hidden) files so "Showing hidden files" in the Windows OS will have no effect on them.

Barry.

[Josh Verran]

Apologies for not being a bit clearer.
I was thinking that rather than making them more distinguishable, it might be easier to just hide them altogether.
These files don't need to be opened by the user from windows explorer, rather they are opened by the software in the event of a crash etc.
There's not really a need to see them.
There are numerous other process/files like this.

Thanks for your time.

[Lingwisyer]

With AC22, the .bpn icon has become more distinguishable to the .pln icon. The .bpn icon is now basically a blank page with the AC tag on it.



Ling.

[Barry Kelly]

No these are not the files that are opened automatically should Archicad crash.
They are 'Autosave' files and they are hidden files - deep in your user profile somewhere.

These are purely a backup of your last save, so should you accidentally make a save when you shouldn't have or sometimes when a file goes corrupt, you have a reserve file you can open.
Even if we could hide them in the Windows OS this would mean they would be hidden from the Archicad file browser as well, so we would never see these files and could never use them.
If we could never see them then there would be no point in having them as they aren't used for anything unless the user decides they need them.


Barry.

[Lingwisyer]

There's not really a need to see them.

These are purely a backup of your last save, so should you accidentally make a save when you shouldn't have or sometimes when a file goes corrupt, you have a reserve file you can open.

For example I have used the .bpn to create superseded copies of models when I have forgotten to create them before implementing major changes. Much easier to track than file states on a server or if you do not have file states.



Ling.