Wish: Autosave with at least 3 seconds delay

Hello, is it possible to make Autosave work only if at least 3 seconds passed after the last command? Or even better, can you add a number counter that will show up somewhere on the screen (or next to the mouse pointer) that warns the user that Autosave will come in several seconds (such like: Autosave in 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 seconds)?
Currently, I see that if I run some command and it’s time for Autosave to do its job (lets say every 10 minutes), it will run immediately after a command is finished, which is kind of annoying while I scale an object or drag some control point or object and then Autosave disrupts the initiated action, resulting in unwanted modification or having to use Undo.

I think you can put Autosave as a command in the “Idle Processor” section of options and set a delay. Maybe then you can just turn off the automatic autosave function and let the idle processor time decide when you are not doing anything for a certain time to run autosave… Haven’t tried this though.

The problem with “Idle processor” is that it may invoke Autosave very often, which heavily reduces the live of an SSD. On the other hand, if I set 10 minutes idle time for Autosave, then it may not run for hours during long sessions. The idea of Autosave is to save a back-up copy at equal time periods, and that proved to save the hard work of many Rhino users during the years. But my idea was to make it a bit smarter and be able to “wait” for a few moments so that it will not interrupt current actions.

Why or how does running autosave reduce the life of an SSD drive? There are no moving parts.
I have the IncrementalSave command in the Idle Processor set to 300 secs. It’s a kludgy work-around but it’s save me on more than one occasion.

The SSD’s life span is reduced a lot over several scenarios, such like when Windows makes constant memory swaps, or if programs (like Rhino) write autosaves too often (especially when the file is 1-2 GB or bigger in size), or if it’s used to write data from security camera or torrent program. For example, while working with a Rhino file that’s 1,5 GB with meshes, each autosave that uses “Save small” (i.e. only NURBS geometry without the rendering meshes) takes about 440 MB. For an autosave set to run every 10 minutes that means 6 times x 440 MB each = 2,64 GB per hour of written data. For a working session of 8 hours or 12 hours per day this is nearly 21,12 GB or 31,68 GB respectively. If the autosave is set to run every 300 seconds i.e. 5 minutes, this effectively doubles these numbers per day.

Maybe the 3 seconds delay of Autosave will be implemented in Rhino 7? :slight_smile:

Sorry, Bobi, but it’s still not implemented in Rhino 7. :wink:

Another day, another Rhino freezing and crash due to Autosave relentlessly disrupting currently active commands… It happened while “Match surface” was running and I changed some settings in the options there.
I lost count on how many times my 3dm scenes were damaged or needed to be rescued after such crashes caused by autosave. Hopefully the reverse countdown I asked for years will be implemented in Rhino 9 or Rhino 10. :slight_smile: Just needs a counter from 30 seconds to 0 to remind the user, and I think that this will be enough time to complete the running commands, thus avoid nearly all crashes caused by Autosave.

Why aren’t you sending reports then? 'Cause I don’t think what you’re describing is what’s happening at all, or even if it is that your proposed ‘solution’ is a good idea, but not much anyone can do without files and such. Obviously there are not thousands of other users reporting the problem, but it needs to be figured out so that you stop losing work, and “have a delay before running Autosave” is a goofy non-solution, things should not be interrupting other things in-progress and screwing them up, indeed that’s probably not what’s actually happening.

Hi Bobi -
" A timer is used to fire an autosave event. If no command is running, Rhino saves immediately. If a command is running, Rhino autosaves at the end of the command/script that is running."

Are you saying that this is not the case? That the autosaver does run while a command is running? How can you tell?

-Pascal

I can confirm that the Autosave interrupts running commands and even active moving of control points via the Gumball. I’m a heavy user of the “MoveUVN” tool and spend lots of time fine adjusting the control points. Autosave regularly triggers while I move control points either via Gumball or “MoveUVN”, at the exact time the selected control point(s) stop moving, causing freezing and sometimes crashes, including freezing of Windows 10. The problem is that Autosave will not wait at least a few seconds after ANY action is fully completed. Instead, it triggers immediately after the last action before the set time period. Freezing also happens while hitting Undo or Redo that happen 1 millisecond (just a speculation) before the Autosave.

Hard to save any crash report or capture a video while freezing of my Rhino 7 or Windows 10, leading to the only “solution” - either a manual restart from the restart button of my PC or shut down from the power cable.

Hi Bobi - thanks, I’ll try to reproduce it.

-Pascal

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It’s never the case as you described it.