SketchUp Pro 2019 = Let's talk about Saving

I hear ya, Ria! I might have a few insights based on my efforts so far. I read in one of these forums–though haven’t tested it–that the Autosave folder in Application Support only exists to catch autosaves of unnamed files, otherwise they go to the temp folder you mentioned. It’s interesting that SU doesn’t treat a force quit like a crash and retain the autosave. What I learned from your experience is that at the first hint of trouble, drag the autosave out of the temp folder before it gets purged by a force quit or restart. I don’t know why they changed it, or why they don’t make autosaves easily accessible if you want to roll back to the autosave voluntarily. Far as I can tell, TheGuz erred in his comment that “To find and open a recovered file, open the “Welcome to SketchUp” window, select the Files tab, and select the file you want to recover from the Recent list.” I believe this is the backup file, not the autosave–which isn’t that helpful because the backup is right there in the folder with your working file. Again–timestamps!

I also use Time Machine, which is also an “autosave” device. It’s not just for crashes and drive failures, but for recovering deleted files, corruptions, and previous setups. Autosave could be so much more useful than it currently is.

Auto-save files are shown in the Welcome Window and are indicated by the red recovered “banner.”

2 Likes

Correct - if you reopen after a SketchUp force quit. But if the force quit was a part of a machine restart, you are doomed (well, mostly I’m the doomed one) - they are not there anymore. Is it a good idea to store autosaves in a temp folder that the application would not have full control of? I assume the OS purged the autosaves out of your designated RecoveredFiles folder, in my case, because of the restart. Is that correct? Or did something else happen?

Purging auto-save files on reboot/crash is a bug (on Mac) and we’re looking into a solution for the problem.

3 Likes
3 Likes

Thanks for clearing that up. I’ve never seen the red banner because I wasn’t looking for a “recovered file” after a crash, I was looking for my “autosave file” to voluntarily rollback 5 minutes. I find that using the mixed terminology of “auto-saved files” and “recovered files” to be very confusing, and could be leading to design confusion for the programming team as far as the intended purpose. To me, an autosave should have some permanence (at least until the next autosave) and be accessible, where-as I wouldn’t expect that of a recovery file. Perhaps the SU team should have a discussion about the differences and value to the user of each concept. The preferences refer to it as “autosave”. The OP started this thread saying “Let’s go over Saves, Backups, and Auto-saves…”, but thereafter refers to “recovered files” with no explanation of the change in terminology. Correct terminology is important here because I believe they imply different things.

3 Likes

ALL of these Auto save & save issues is not just a Mac issue. I’m operating on Windows and I am experiencing this crazy, frustrating issue as well. Two weeks ago, my SU 2018 crashed after a continuous Autosave. After endless searching I was unable to recover four (4) days of work from both all of my drives. I even paid $40.00 for a recovery software program, but SU nor the files appeared in the recovery.
I ended up having to redraw the model. I am so fearful of loosing another drawing I began manually saving and “Save As” to new a new file every 30 minutes in addition to my “Auto save” every 20 minutes. Yesterday, I contacted SU by phone and the agent said she had not heard of other users experiencing my problem. I was hoping the new SU 2019 download would alleviate the stress. Not so much! For the past four hours I have been working in SU and 30 minutes ago SU began auto save, then the “Not Responding” appeared. In the interim I have checked my “saved” file (on my desktop) and the time stamp is from six (6) hours ago. Thank fully, I now back up on a USB as well.
Is there a hidden Recovery File folder that the “Auto Save” file saves to as well?

No matter what other options there are, saving a copy now and then is a good idea. I work differently than I’ve seen others do. Many people do a save as, v2, save as v3. They are constantly working in a file that has a different name. I usually just duplicate the file, and carry one with the main file.

In SketchUp terms, that would be Save a Copy As. With that I could use a fancy date related name, to know when I made the copy, but continue to work in my main file, with its original name. If things go horribly wrong I would delete the original file and rename the most recent save a copy as file as the main name. I like simpler names.

2 Likes

I Save A Copy As before doing any destructive changes to the model. It’s also fun to be able to go back and see how a project grew.

2 Likes

I’m not a Windows user, but on a Mac that file would be your “backup” which in SU is a copy of the previous file you saved manually. In other words, every time you hit save, your previous saved version becomes the backup before your file is overwritten by your new save.

I’m also guessing that Windows probably has a hidden temp folder for the Auto-saves like the Mac. SU has done a real disservice to its users by not making this easily visible or accessible. Plus, the automatic purging when closing the document is unfortunate since there are often times that don’t involve crashing when the auto-saved file could save the day. Put it somewhere else please!

1 Like

I am getting incredibly frustrated with this. I am on a Mac. and cannot find the recovery file anywhere. I keep losing hours of work. Am I understanding correctly that when I have Autosave every 5 minutes checked that the Project Name.skp file in my project folder is not updated? So where is the autosave file following a crash? I have never seen a recovery file in the welcome window. I know I should manually save frequently, but got out of the habit since it was never a problem.
I AM PULLING MY HAIR OUT! This never was a problem before SU 2019, and I have been a SU user since 2006. Why is going on here?

1 Like

Temporarily - use a manual system of saving frequently (could still leave autosave on), change the file version number a few times a day at least and save the files to your own location of preference.

Crazy me, but I thought "Auto-save’ and “Backup” might mean something. 25%20PM

1 Like

There may be some issues with Auto save on Mac for 2019 - not something I can investigate. You can search other posts for related info.

My workflow is much better suited to manual saves (not for everyone) - I need many sets of versions of the same model. When you manual save, you get to choose specific points in the model development which are important to document.

You could try the following:

Open a terminal window and copy/paste this command into the terminal:
find /var/folders/ -type d -name "*com.sketchup.SketchUp.2019.$USER*" 2> /dev/null

Take the output of that command and append SKETCHUP/RecoveredFiles. If you navigate to that directory you should see the recovered (aka, auto-save) files.

But do not waste your time with the RecoveredFiles folder (“aka auto-saves”? Are they, really?) if you have done a reboot. There will be nothing there. And you won’t be able to find the temp folder that RecoveredFiles is placed in even if you had Time Machine backups. Many temp folders are not considered worthy of saving by the systems (and logically so!), but the SketchUp developers found it pertinent to place AUTO-SAVES there in the 2019 version. I am going to assume this is an oversight in the latest version and not an intended change from the previous versions - as we are possibly being led to believe in the original post at the top?

I have not gotten any answers to my previous questions regarding this, neither any response to the ticket I opened with SketchUp Support nearly two weeks ago. I have long redone my lost week’s worth of work now, and have been patiently waiting for something…. Some reassurance this will be corrected? An honest acknowledgment of what went wrong in the 2019 version? Or - dare I say - a mere apologetic message of sorts to all of us ordinary users who made the mistake to rely on something that was working in versions prior to 2019?

In any case, I think we can stop talking about that obscure unfortunate RecoveredFolders like it is any decent solution that exists. And, how many more people have to lose their long hours of work, before a software patch is released? I mean, seriously, how hard could it be to code in a different location to store the disappearing “recovered files”? And why is your Help page (that, we - the users, are supposed to trust, right?) still misleading people to go searching for ghosts in a location that contains all of NONE auto-saved files? ( @ Setting Software and File Preferences | SketchUp Help, “If you’re a macOS user, you find the file in the following folder: ~User/Library/Application Support/SketchUpVersion /SketchUp/Autosave. On recent versions of macOS, the Library folder is hidden, so you must make the folder visible before you can find your auto-saved file.” )

3 Likes

This post from earlier in the thread sounds like the acknowledgment of the problem you are lookin for. Let’s hope it can get fixed soon, I’m staying with 18 until all the bugs are worked out.

I have seen this, yes. Not exactly reassuring nor sympathetic in any way, and all questions still remain unanswered. But thanks for pointing it out so others can see it in case they missed the tiny post.

2 Likes

OK. I am getting the picture now. On a Mac, the Autosave checked probably means nothing. I have never seen the red recovered file banner in the welcome window. The working file and the backup file only save with a manual File/Save. On all the other apps I know of Auto-save saves the working file at the period set. It would seem to me to be fair to warn users to incorporate manual file/ save or Command S into their habits every few minutes or so, or risk losing lots of work. This seems to me to be a major weakness. I do not remember this being a problem on earlier versions of SU.

if you use multiple documents, Autosave hasn’t ‘really’ worked on a mac ever…

it seems that the timer zero’s when you change models, so you could always end up with none of your days work autosaved if working with support files…

the other issue, which I think the ‘re-housing’ was attempting to address, was the number of people that opened the Autosave_mymodel.skp [ unintentionally? ] without re-naming it and when they had an issue supplied a Autosave_Autosave_Autosave_Autosave_Autosave_Autosave_mymodel.skp [ there was one last week on the forum ]…

I agree with burying the file, but not in a ‘system purged’ location and the dev’s have acknowledged this as a bug and I’m confident a new ‘User space’ location will be in the first maintenance release…

I only ever turn it on when testing issues like this one…

john

1 Like