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Make .pln and .bpn Windows file icons more distiguishable

Anonymous
Not applicable
Please make the standard Windows icons more distinguishable. Like completelety red .bpn icon instead of the tiny red arrow.
11 REPLIES 11
Lingwisyer
Guru
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.

AC22-23 AUS 7000Help Those Help You - Add a Signature
Self-taught, bend it till it breaksCreating a Thread
Win10 | R5 2600 | 16GB | GTX1660 
Barry Kelly
Moderator
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.
One of the forum moderators.
Versions 6.5 to 27
Dell XPS- i7-6700 @ 3.4Ghz, 16GB ram, GeForce GTX 960 (2GB), Windows 10
Lenovo Thinkpad - i7-1270P 2.20 GHz, 32GB RAM, Nvidia T550, Windows 11
Lingwisyer
Guru
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

AC22-23 AUS 7000Help Those Help You - Add a Signature
Self-taught, bend it till it breaksCreating a Thread
Win10 | R5 2600 | 16GB | GTX1660 
felcunha
Expert
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)...
Felipe Ribeiro Cunha

AC 26, macOS Monterey
Josh Verran
Expert
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?

GRAPHISOFT CERTIFIED ARCHICAD BIM MANAGER

ARCHICAD 18-27 | BIMcloud Basic | CI Tools | Grasshopper - Rhino | CloudCompare | Bluebeam

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Barry Kelly
Moderator
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.
One of the forum moderators.
Versions 6.5 to 27
Dell XPS- i7-6700 @ 3.4Ghz, 16GB ram, GeForce GTX 960 (2GB), Windows 10
Lenovo Thinkpad - i7-1270P 2.20 GHz, 32GB RAM, Nvidia T550, Windows 11
Josh Verran
Expert
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.

GRAPHISOFT CERTIFIED ARCHICAD BIM MANAGER

ARCHICAD 18-27 | BIMcloud Basic | CI Tools | Grasshopper - Rhino | CloudCompare | Bluebeam

LinkedIn | www.creativespace.co.nz | Tauranga, New Zealand

Windows 10 Pro | Intel Core i9-9900K @3.60GHZ | 32Gb RAM | 2xSamsung S27F350 1920x1080 60Hz | Nvidia Quadro P2200 (5Gb)
Lingwisyer
Guru
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.

AC22-23 AUS 7000Help Those Help You - Add a Signature
Self-taught, bend it till it breaksCreating a Thread
Win10 | R5 2600 | 16GB | GTX1660 
Barry Kelly
Moderator
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.
One of the forum moderators.
Versions 6.5 to 27
Dell XPS- i7-6700 @ 3.4Ghz, 16GB ram, GeForce GTX 960 (2GB), Windows 10
Lenovo Thinkpad - i7-1270P 2.20 GHz, 32GB RAM, Nvidia T550, Windows 11