Autosave doesn't seem to be implemented properly. I would have thought that the program would only save if there were changes. However, it appears that it saves on a time basis, regardless of changes. Is that true?
I had been fiddling about with my design and, at one point (for reasons that aren't relevant to this topic) deleted all the internals of my house design, knowing that I wasn't going to save it. I had that temporary design open for quite some time as I was fiddling with other views and other designs. I noticed an autosave message a few times. Anyway, I eventually closed down without explicitly saving the changes and didn't save anything when prompted during shutdown.
Now, I find that my design with deleted internals actually was saved to my design file. "Oh no", I thought, "that's a lot of work down the pan." I checked the program settings and noticed that the backup count is 2. "Ah," I thought, "I'll be able to get my file from the backups." But no, the two backup files are identical to the main design file. What is the point of that? It seems utterly useless to save the design file, with no changes, and use the unchanged design as a backup to itself. Or am I missing something, here?
I've now turned off the autosave, since it didn't do what I expected (to save the changes to a temporary file that can be recovered, but not to the actual file that I'm editing, and not saving when there are no changes) and programs doing unexpected things aren't nice.
Luckily, I have a print-out of the design, with most of the dimensions added (yes, very lucky), but all the furniture was resized after inserting so that work has all gone.
So, am I just not understanding something about autosave and backup (I am new to this version of the product), or is this poor implementation?
Tony
Phew! I managed to find an earlier design that wasn't too different from the design I lost, so not as much to re-do, apart from all of the dimensioning (I'm not sure why there isn't an automatic way to show dimensions for all internal and external walls, unless I just haven't figured out how to do that yet). However, I'd still like to know why the autosave and backup mechanism works the way it appears to and, if it does, whether that's a bug.
Tony
Hi Tony,
The Autosave is working as intended - it is time based and will save at whether frequency you nominate and make the number of copies you want. The latest replaces the previous one and so on, so you could have a series of saves at say half an hour intervals for a few hours if you wanted and could restore any of them if necessary.
It appears from what you said that you had it open for some time without using it. If you had only 2 backups set and had it set to 10 minute intervals and left it untouched for half an hour, then you would have 2 identical backups. The program assumes that if you have it open you are using it and if you had been using it then you would have had different backup files.
If you leave autosave off please set a timer or something to remind you to save frequently with a different name - if the prgram crashes you could lose everything and no backups to fall back on.
On the Tools menu there are automatic exterior dimensions. Interior are semiautomatic as these are very dependent on the user, as to where they want them.
Allan
Thanks, Allan.
All I can say is that if that's the way it's intended to work, then the intention is wrong. Until I specifically ask the program to save my work (with changes), it should not overwrite what I have. The feature of backups is a definite safeguard against its doing something I didn't want, but overwriting backups when there are no actual changes just seems plain daft (I'm a software developer myself and definitely wouldn't consider adding this kind of "feature").
I got lucky in having a previous design that wasn't too far removed from what I had but was definitely issuing a few choice words concerning the developers of this product! Again, the program should not make any assumptions for me, unless I've asked it to. In this case, the default setting should be not to save automatically or to have enough backups so that a long session away from the computer, with the program running, will not do nasty things that cannot be undone. The program could always prompt the user, the first time, to set up the autosave and backup settings, with a cautionary note about what the effects could be.
Preferably, the autosave should write to a recovery file (perhaps only writing changes, if those can be detected), not the real file, which should only be written to if the user requests a save (either directly or via a prompt at shutdown). Failing this, the default number of backups should be much larger, if autosave is enabled.
Thanks for the tips on exterior dimensions, and thanks for offering so much help here; it is much appreciated.
Hi Tony,
I tend to agree with you. As I do not usually leave TFP running, I had not registered that all the backups would eventually be overwritten with the latest version, (even if you had it set to many) if it was left open long enough.
I will point out this issue to the programmers so hopefully it will be addressed in a future release, maybe programming it not to save if nothing had changed in the autosave period.
Allan
In general terms, programs have 2 different features --> Autosave and / or Backup. And as user, I like to have both. Of course, you should be able to customize these features according with your preferences and work style
Take MS Word for example --> it has both features, but you can use them as option. A friend of mine was writing a very important document and suddenly the program crashed because a part of the HD crashed --> last changes and backup files were recovered because they were in other sector of the HD
Pat