Automatic incremental saving of a Rhino File

Please comment on the correctness/incorrectness of this. I thought that since Rhino was using many of the windows functions—so— that when I set “Auto Save” to every 5 minutes—Rhino would do an incremental save of my material—so—if I was busy–It would just keep updating my file. I think I am finding out that this impression is incorrect—and—the only way my work is actually saved is when I manually click “Save”. I have found that everyday when I start a new session of a Rhino—I---do a “Save as” and just change the date that I always place at the end of the file name. This gives you a record of your progress—and—kind of acts like “Hide”—in case you want to go back to an other version of the same file. If you never do this—you just keep changing the original file.

Autosave is not an incremental save. It is there to be able to recover a reasonably recent version of your file in case Rhino crashes. There is only ever one version of an autosaved file. When it kicks in, it does not actually save the file you’re currently working on, it saves a copy. So you do need to save the original manually, at least once when you close the file if you want to keep your changes. Attention, closing your file without saving also tells autosave that you don’t want to save it either, so it’s gone without saving as well.

If you want to have a series of restore points, try Incremental Save command, which saves your current file with a number. It is like SaveAs in that it does save the file you’re currently working in.

HTH, --Mitch

Thanks for the reply. You have verified what I had interpreted as the function of “Auto Save”; and, --{ has attracted someone from McNeel as I had hoped it would do}. It may do find for some; however, it does not function as a “True” incremental save function. And, the “Incremental Save” tool is of little use—in that it creates numbered files that conflict with my file system. My projects may contain —let’s say 50 +/- objects that will be used for CNC work. Each object is part of the complete project—and drawn, so as to align with others in the project to verify it’s correctness—then each individual object is “Copied” to a new File—which places it in a Panel–{of which there may be as many as 100 or so }—that the CNC will recognize and enable for proper indexing on the CNC. These panel are numbered—placed in numbered folders, and used to made 20 or more Machining Operations. The current “Incremental Save” tool — only generates confusing numbers into an organized filing system—without which I couldn’t find the necessary files to work with. Soooooooooo—in the end Rhino at this time does what it does…………. It would be nice if someone at McNeel adapted an “Auto Incremental Save” that worked in the back ground—such as in the program “Word”. Wherein, you set a time for the program to review the changes made since the last save and save only those changes to the Original File. Or, this system is used in back-up programs—such as Acronis & Carbonite— or similar—some of which I am sure are utilized by McNeel its self.

Auto Save is a disaster recovery system, Incremental save is just another manual save system which generates confusing numbers for files—which may work for some. They all do what they were designed to do—I would just suggest future versions of Rhino contain a automatic true incremental save function.

Thanks for your time, Joe

In your case, it should be possible to script a personalized “incremental save” button that would save the file name/number increment in accordance to your own system. The last increment could be stored as document data, so you could even pick up after having closed the file and come back to it later. Would still be semi-manual, it would not be on a timer…

–Mitch

Oh, BTW, I am not from McNeel, actually.

Mitch,

Thanks very much for your suggestions—I’ll look into it

Again, Thanks for your Time--------------Joe

I found out the hard way that the autosave is nothing like hitting the actual save button. As stated above it is for the case that Rhino Crashes.

IF your computer crashes…and gives you the blue screen of death…none of those autosaves do anything except annoy you when you are trying to perform a command and it autosaves and you have to wait for it to finish.

I have had Rhino Crash many times due to RhinoCam and in those cases the autosave works well for that.

BlueScreen cost me 5 hrs and a hard lesson that it is not the same as clicking save at all. I need to get into the habbit of saving more often.

I just wish the autosave could be configured to be a real save. Is that possible? I get all involved and in my head and hrs can fly by…

Is that possible? To configure autosave to be a real save?

Thanks! Eric

And an edit to the above… If Rhino crashes and when you open Rhino again and it asks you if you want to save the crash spot…Do it. Because that is your one and only chance. If you say no. It is gone…