Nicinus Posted November 18, 2014 Share Posted November 18, 2014 I was messing around with a sloped patio I had created in an elevation and extruded, when Chief suddenly said I had a SEH serious error something. After restarting Chief it turns out my last saved file is corrupt, but so is the auto_save_bak plan, it's identical in size so somehow it appears to have written over itself while trying to save. Now, I have been doing minor work on this file the whole weekend, small adjustments here and there, and it has definitely been open on the computer. However, when I look in the archive folder in Documents/Chief Architect Premier X6 Data/Archives the folder has the name_2014_11_18 plan file as well as the autosave from today (identical in size and corrupt) but the next archived file isn't until the 14th (last Friday). There is no file from the weekend and nothing from yesterday? Looking in Preferences I have autosave on 5 minutes and auto archive on Daily? I will call technical support but thought I would check first if anyone here knows what is going on, or if I'm missing something? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cheryl_C_Crane Posted November 18, 2014 Share Posted November 18, 2014 Hope that you'll share how you came out. Hoping all is well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebdesign Posted November 18, 2014 Share Posted November 18, 2014 were you goofing around w/ tilted solids? I crashed a couple x's yesterday when they got pretty irregular shaped while editing them in a camera. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nicinus Posted November 18, 2014 Author Share Posted November 18, 2014 were you goofing around w/ tilted solids? I crashed a couple x's yesterday when they got pretty irregular shaped while editing them in a camera. Indeed I was. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HumbleChief Posted November 18, 2014 Share Posted November 18, 2014 It seems like I had those same settings and crashed bad last week and had corrupted Archives as well - had to go to Carbonite to get usable file. Can't say I understand the archive function very well. Very interested in what tech support tells you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nicinus Posted November 19, 2014 Author Share Posted November 19, 2014 Yes, so just got of the phone with tech support and I had definitely misunderstood the way it worked. There are two parts to it. Autosave: I was under the assumption that it saved every 5 minutes and then a number of files back until it eventually erased the oldest ones depending on a setting somewhere. This is the way it for example works in software like 3ds Max where you set interval in minutes and number of files to keep. However, in Chief it does not, it only saves the last file that is five minutes old (or whatever you set) and then overwrites that file. The problem with this is that if you are unknowingly starting to create a corrupt file but the program sort of still works (like it did for me when I was trying to figure out my sloping polysolid) or if you step back to think about what is going on for five minutes, you will also corrupt the autosave file. Since this is the only autosave file you have it this is something to keep in mind. Autoarchive: This is the next level of protection and it didn't quite work as I personally was expecting either. I had my setting on Daily, but contrary to what I would have found intuitive, that it would save a backup once a day the computer is on at a certain time or something, it only do so at the moment you save the file yourself. So if I saved last Friday I would get a file in my archive with that date, and if I then never bothered to save since I was only doing minor tweaks here and there during the day until today there would be no archived file during this period. Finally if I then work very hard today Tuesday and save more or less continously there will only be one file auto archived for the whole day, the last one saved, and in my case the one that turned out to be corrupt. If I had had it set to hourly instead I would have had a file that was at least an hour old or so assuming I had saved it then. Like in the daily example, if you would have confined your work to do a lot within the same hour you would only have one archive, the last one. In my case I lost all work since last Friday, and I guess the moral of the story is to use the Save button often while having Autoarchive set on 'Previous Save', which will give you an autoarchive file every time you save. (PS. If anyone ever ends up in the same situation there is possible hope if Chief crashed hard and didn't have a chance to erase all the temporary undo files. These are full plan files and Chief ironically adds another file sequentially instead of overwriting the last one in this case, so you can theoretically back trace until you find a file that is sound. However, these are all erased if Chief is closed normally) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dshall Posted November 19, 2014 Share Posted November 19, 2014 were you goofing around w/ tilted solids? I crashed a couple x's yesterday when they got pretty irregular shaped while editing them in a camera. I was messing around with tilted solids yesterday, today my computer was behaving badly, several aborted starts, long time opening, had to reboot computer several times today. Lost half my manuf, libraries, restarted and did get them back. I will see what tomorrow brings. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DavidJPotter Posted November 19, 2014 Share Posted November 19, 2014 I suppose this sort of thing is a rite of passage or so it seems to me. The day that you fully realize and understand that only you and nothing or no one else is responsible for outcomes. The other realization is that "Gone" is GONE in some cases. I had such a episode back in 1999 and since then I have taken steps to make sure that I never loose a flipping thing: I manually save (F3 or CTRL-S) while I work so I never have to then depend upon automatic-mechanical devices to "save" or back up my work. When a plan starts to show evidence of "stress" I immediately save it as a new name as insurance against just this sort of thing occuring. Additional hard drives are cheap, my time is not. This has happened to me once or twice in twenty two years of use of Chief Architect Inc software but once is too often. I also use a software program that backs up my stuff to another hard drive automatically. I have a Carbonite account as a further back up. How long it takes you to personally take steps to protect your data is the wild variable. Join the Club. DJP Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lbuttery Posted November 20, 2014 Share Posted November 20, 2014 being a programmer for 30+ years I do my own saves using "Save As" I prefer not to rely on Chief's archive system It may work fine but I'd rather do my own I add date and time to the file name and keep "everything" until I am done with the project then I clean-up and keep only the "necessary" using Carbonite or similar is good too but I still do my own "save as" sometimes every 5 minutes when I am doing heavy editing otherwise every 15 - 30 minutes Lew Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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