Recover from a Power Failure with IntelliCAD's AutoSave
You're working in IntelliCAD. You're creating a technical
drawing. You've been on that drawing a couple of hours. And then
a disaster. Power failure. The electricity shut down. The
computer is no longer working. You've got a blank screen. And
your drawing is gone.
Everything you did with your drawing. It's gone. Because you
didn't save your drawing,
you lost a lot of time.
NOTE: if
you were using the AutoSave feature of IntelliCAD,
your drawing has been saved.
Over the AutoSave
Feature
You can retrieve your drawing. And get back what you did. You
will not get back everything. You'll loose some work.
How much will you lose? That depends on how you have set the
AutoSave feature. But you have not lost everything. Not your
whole drawing.
Let's see how we can work with the AutoSave feature. Let's
see what it does. And let's see how we can retrieve an
IntelliCAD drawing:
- First we must enable AutoSave. We click on
Tools in the menu bar and on Options in the pull
down menu. The Options dialog box is displayed.
- The screen under the General tab is displayed. In
the dialog box is the AutoSave area. Click in the
checkbox in front of Enable auto save.
- Now the AutoSave feature is enabled. You can set a time
for the AutoSave feature.
(I've set the time to ten minutes.)
Here I must give a warning. Don't set the time too small.
Because the drawing will
be saved. That takes time.
Suppose you're working on a big drawing. Very often you have
to wait. As the drawing is saved. I don't think you want to do
that.
More About the
Time You Set
If you've got a power failure. You will loose not more than
the time you set for the AutoSave feature. So things are not
that bad.
You can set what extension is used for the drawing that is
saved over the AutoSave feature. By default that extension is SV$.
Don't change that extension.
You have enabled the AutoSave feature. The drawing is saved
every ten minutes. And the drawing file gets the extension SV$.
Very nice!
But where is the drawing saved? And what can I do with the
saved drawing? First let's see where the drawing is saved.
You Can Set Where
the Drawing is Saved
Open the Options dialog box. And then click on the
Paths/Files tab. Move down in the list. You see the entry
Temporary file. Behind that entry is the path in which the
AutoSave feature saves your drawing file. With the SV$
extension. You can change it. Click on the path. And type a new
path. Make sure the path exists. Create it first. I have created
the C:\Temp folder.
And now you have this power failure. Your computer is no
longer working. Wait until you again have electricity and start
your computer. Go to the path where the drawing file has been
saved through AutoSave. Find your file. The name of the file is
the same as the name of your drawing.
To make sure your drawing name is used. Save your drawing
right away as you start working on it. You must change the file
extension of the drawing file. Change the file extension to DWG.
And maybe move the drawing file to a new path.
Now the drawing file can be opened by IntelliCAD. Now you can
continue working on your drawing.
Power failure?
No problem.
About the Author
Jos van Doorn is an AutoCAD specialist and AutoLISP
programmer. He has published a series of
e-books on AutoCAD and AutoLISP topics, which are available for
downloading at his
website.
He is also publisher of the free ACAD Newsletter. To subscribe,
visit the newsletter's
webpage. More AutoCAD Select Tips
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