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May 7, 2024

Autosave - How to set and use.

Each week I will be posting article on my blog to keep you up to date with important and relevant technical information that I feel needs to be highlighted and reviewed.

Most of these points have come up during the support service sessions that I have with clients.

My goal in highlighting them here is that it will give you a quick way to refresh key points of your CAD software and help you make the most out of your Cad systems.

This week we cover: How to set and use Autosave.

BricsCAD has an autosave feature that will create a copy of your drawing after a set interval. These files are given a .SV$ extension and are saved to a fixed location. In BricsCAD you can use the SAVEFILEFOLDER command to open your autosave folder.  

To be able to spot your .SV$ files, you may find you need to turn on file extensions in Windows Explorer. To do this, go to the View tab, then check the option for File name extensions.

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Autosave files are in fact just drawing files saved with a .SV$ file extension. To OPEN in BricsCAD simply rename the .SV$ file extension to .DWG

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A couple of important things to know about Autosave:

  • It ONLY does an automatic save if you haven't within the set interval. If you save regularly, then an autosave file won't get created. i.e. Every time you do a SAVE (or QSAVE) the autosave timer is reset.
  • Autosave is ONLY triggered when you run a command. E.g. you have SAVETIME = 15 minutes. You make some changes to your drawing, then get called away forgetting to SAVE. After 1 hour you return and continue working on your drawing. It is only now, when you run a command that the autosave fires. i.e. No autosave wasn't carried out while you were away.

SETTINGS

In SETTINGS the following variables affect how autosave works:

SAVETIME

Sets the Autosave time interval. Default is 60 minutes, we recommend that you set to 10-15 minutes. You may find it impacts on performance if you set the interval to short as BricsCAD will be constantly interrupting your work to save.  

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SAVEFILEPATH

Sets the Autosaves location. The default location is your %TEMP% folder. As the temp folder can contain lots of files, we recommend that you create a folder in a known location to make your autosave files easier to find E.g.

set SAVEFILEPATH = “C:\BCAD\Autosave”

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COMMAND(S)

SAVEFILEFOLDER

Opens the file explorer (in Windows) at the autosave folder location. Autosave files use the following naming format:

<Drawing Name>_<Time Code>.SV$

E.g. Drawing1_4342.SV$

Further help:

CAD Concepts is a CAD management and consultancy business owned and operated by me, Jason Bourhill.   I have extensive experience using CAD software and over 30 years’ experience working as a Mechanical Engineer, CAD Draughtsman and Project Manager.  

My area of expertise includes:

- Reviewing, assessing, and providing advice and support on your current CAD office software and hardware requirements

- Providing advice and support on folder structures, file conventions, block and part library structures, template creation and general file management

- Running and creating CAD training courses

I am also extending my support service offering from my office here in New Zealand to include a range of ongoing support contracts so that I can better assist you and your team to maximise and utilise all of the available tools of the Cad system.

Please reach out to me https://www.cadconcepts.co.nz/support/ and let me know how I can assist you and your team.

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