Autosave not where they should be

[LMM]

I have Sketchup Studio 2022. My autosaves are set to 5 mins but there is nothing in the folder they are supposed to be saving to. I’ve ticked ‘show hidden files’ as well, but still nothing. I keep losing work…help!!

[francisquitof]

That is auto saved on a temporary file, when you open sketchup it tells you that there’s a more recent copy of the file you’re opening and if you would like to use it instead. If you want your auto save documents to be saved you must check the make a copy of the file box, that will create a backup document .skb in the same folder where you have saved the file. If you want to open the backup file just change the .skb to .skp

[Anssi]

Note too that Autosave does nothing before you have saved a new model once. And when you close SketchUp, the autosave file is deleted. It only remains if SketchUp crashes. It is meant for crash recovery, not to replace ordinary saves.

[LMM]

thanks for your replies guys…right, the crash only thing makes sense…it does ask me if I want the recovery when I crash…I can’t see the ‘make a copy of the file’ box to tick in preferences/general…can’t think where else to look??

[TIG]

There are two ‘save’ settings in Preferences > General > Saving.
One is called ‘Create backup’, if this is set when you save your model a second file is made in that model’s folder which is one save behind so you never loose all of your work. The PC’s backup file has a suffix .SKB instead of .SKP, you can rename the suffix to use that version in a disaster. On a MAC the backup file is named differently - xxx.SKP backs up as xxx~.SKP/
The other option is Auto-save. With this set your model is automatically saved at a given interval, after the first save. The copy goes into a special folder C:\Users\[UserName]\AppData\Local\SketchUp\SketchUp 20NN\SketchUp\working\SKETCHUP\RecoveredFiles. If you have the timer set to be too frequent it can cause performance issues when modelling. The Auto-save file is only useful if SketchUp crashes and you’ve lost your model’s changes, in this case you can move the Auto-save file and reuse it. However, if you successfully save and close your model any temporarily saved Auto-save file is auto-deleted…
The AppData folder tree is hidden by default so you need to deliberately allow access…

[francisquitof]

It’s called create a copy, is in the same place where you set the autosave time. Window/preferences/general

[LMM]

yep…definately don’t have that button at that location…screenshot below…

[LMM]

thanks very much fr your help…that file location differs to the ‘model’ save location that I was told to look for…I was hoping to use the autosave function. I was hoping to retrieve the autosave as my machine crashed last we - save/backup file didn’t work, but it also didn’t offer me the autosave. The ‘create a copy’ option for autosave sounds like it would be what I’m after but I don’t have that button available in 2022 in preferences/general.

[Anssi]

@LMM

create a copy’ option for autosave

The “create backup” box refers to normal saves. When it is checked, the previous version of your model is saved with the SKB extension when you do a normal save.

When you start a new model, the autosave function does nothing until you have saved it normally for the first time. After that, the autosave information is available if SketchUp crashes. If you quit the application normally, the autosave is erased automatically.