Any way to recover from locally cached files?

[Oceanconcepts]

I just had a crash and discovered that nothing I have done for the last couple of days has been saved to the cloud. No error messages, just when I went to reopen the file I had been working on the last version listed in the dashboard is from two days ago. That's the last date shown for any Fusion file. 

I notice that after a crash I sometimes got a message that Fusion was recovering from cached files.  Are there in fact any cached versions I can recover?  I did quite a lot of work on an important file this afternoon, and I'd prefer not to have to attempt to recover so much.  

Really enjoying Fusion, except for this.  

Ron

[sachlene.singh]

This is certainly unexpected behaviour and something we will be looking into.

I realize that you posted in another thread about this same problem, and Kevin is working with you there to understand this better. We will continue to work with you via that thread regarding this issue to avoid any confusion.

Thanks!

[Oceanconcepts]

Yes, the "failure to save" is raised in the other thread, but my intent here was to ask about the possibility of recovery from cached files- something that comes up whenever there is a crash or disruption in the internet or server connection. 

Is there a way to force a recovery from a locally cached version?  What is going on when I get this dialog- which is sometimes populated with a file name and sometimes not? Clicking on a file prompts me to save locally- it's not clear from the interface what that has to do with recovering to the application. 

I'm trying to understand this mechanism, and if there is a path for recovery if connectivity has been lost for some reason. Is Fusion actually saving locally?

[sanjay_jayabal]

Hi Ron,

Can I ask you to provide some details?

1. Do you know if you were connected to the internet when you closed your file(s) after working on them for a while?

2. What are your autosave options set to? (to find this: open any design and at the end of the breadcrumb (Projects > 'projectname' > 'designname') you will see a drop down called Design. Select this drop down and choose Preferences.  You should see 3 options for autosave -

a) checkbox to autosave recovery files - is this checked?

b) autosave time interval (minutes) - what is the value?

c) autosave location - can you copy and paste the entire path in your response?

The autosave location will contain an xml file that will provide the location of where your autosaved fusion files are cached.  If this autosave location is empty, please let me know that also.

regards,

Sanjay.

[Oceanconcepts]

---

sjayabal wrote:

Hi Ron,

Can I ask you to provide some details?

1. Do you know if you were connected to the internet when you closed your file(s) after working on them for a while?

2. What are your autosave options set to? (to find this: open any design and at the end of the breadcrumb (Projects > 'projectname' > 'designname') you will see a drop down called Design. Select this drop down and choose Preferences.  You should see 3 options for autosave -

a) checkbox to autosave recovery files - is this checked?

b) autosave time interval (minutes) - what is the value?

c) autosave location - can you copy and paste the entire path in your response?

The autosave location will contain an XML file that will provide the location of where your autosaved fusion files are cached.  If this autosave location is empty, please let me know that also.

regards,

Sanjay.

---

Sanjay,

1)  I was connected to the internet when the file was closed- I had to force quit as Fusion had locked up. Versions had not apparently been saved for almost two days- at least that was the time of the last version showing in the dashboard. 

2)  I have set auto save to 10 minutes.  I believe the default was 15.  

a.   Auto Save recovery files is checked. 

b.  Auto save time interval is set to 10 minutes.

c.   Auto save location:  /Users/Ron_iMac/Library/Application Support/Autodesk/Autodesk Fusion 360/AutoSave

At this location is an XML file called AutoSaveFileList.xml.  Opening in BBEdit gives the following: 

<?XML version="1.0" encoding="UTF-16" standalone="no" ?>
<AutoSavedFileList>

</AutoSavedFileList>

After re-opening and recreating the changes, versions now seem to be saving normally. 

Thanks,

Ron

[ahsan.autodesk]

Hi Ron,

It is good to see things are working fine now, but we would appreciate if you could help us figure out what could've gone wrong.

Normally, when we fail to upload a file to the Cloud, we show an in-the-app notification to the user, that would say something like "upload failed - some exception occurred". Do you remember seeing any such notification? Do you normally see notifications related to other things in your app?

Files that need to be uploaded to the Cloud are cached in a temp folder on disk. When the upload finishes successfully, these cached files are deleted from disk. If the upload fails, we keep the cache and keep retrying the upload until it succeeds. You can query the cached location by following this procedure:

1. View --> Show Text Commands
2. Make sure "Txt" is selected in the text command window (look at the extreme bottom-right)
3. Type Paths.Get and hit enter
4. You'll see various folder locations being dumped out
5. Search for the cloudCacheDirectory location
6. Go to that location in the Mac Finder

Do you see any files in that folder? Can you open the XML file sitting there and tell me what it contains?

Thx much
Ahsan

[Oceanconcepts]

Hi Ashan,

I am quite sure I did not have any notifications in the hours before the crash/ force quit. There was one the day before, but it went away on restarting the application- it's still listed in my notifications center on the Mac, so I'm quite certain there were none before the crash. 

The only message(s) I have seen in the past are either

"PLM 360 Error Message: Connection exception:: std exception"

or 

"PLM 360 Error Message: PLM operation failed:: std exception"

I have never seen an "upload failed" message. 

I know when this happens that the server connection is interrupted- this is not typically at my end, as I still have internet connectivity, but at the Autodesk end.  Often it resolves if I just quit and restart the application, but there have been some extended outages. I have learned not to keep working if I am getting these messages, as nothing is being saved. I did quit Fusion around the time of the last saved version, but restarted the application an did not get any subsequent messages, so I assumed everything was OK. Sometimes, after restarting, I get a dialog like this:

Which most often is empty, but sometimes, as in this screenshot from a while back, can be populated with one or two file paths.  It's not clear to me what saving or opening options do in these contexts.  

When I follow your instructions to look at text commands for the cloudCacheDirectory location, I see this:

I'm not sure how to locate the first part of that path in the finder, and it doesn't allow copy/ paste, but looking at the Autodesk/ Autodesk Fusion 360/ Cache location in my User/ Library folder I see:

 The cache location is empty.  Is there another location I should be looking? 

Thanks,

Ron

[Oceanconcepts]

Ahsan,

More info- I've been working again on this same file a little yesterday and some this evening, and deliberately saved a version marker, or tried to- twice. In addition, there should have been auto-saves.  

When I look in the Dashboard (I have confirmed this on two computers) the last saved version is #93, Friday, April 12, 2013, 21:11:02.  It's now the 14th, about 22:12, and the file is apparently not updating versions on the server.  I still have it open, and have used the Export Archive function.  

The last PLM 360 error message I have recorded from Fusion was from 2 days ago, but I can't check the exact time. It's possible it was around the time Fusion stopped saving.  There is no current indication of any problem, other than not having versions saved in the dashboard. 

I don't know if this is a factor, but typically I have been leaving Fusion running in the background- the Mac sleeps at night with occasional waking for network access. 

If there is anything you would like me to check, let me know.  I may try opening the archive on another machine tomorrow.  I just opened it successfuly on a laptop- it seems my iMac is in fact not connected to the Fusion server, but is not telling me.  And not apparently saving cached files. 

Ron

[ahsan.autodesk]

Thanks for the detailed replies Ron.

The PLM 360 error message indeed points at unsuccessful Cloud uploads. It is possible there were some hiccups at the Autodesk Cloud side during those two days (?). However, if there are no more PLM 360 error notifications, and if the Cache folder is empty, it should mean the files had since been successfully uploaded to the Cloud.

We'll try to make it more clear whether the App is in a "connected" state or not. We'll also try to go through some more negative workflows where the connection is flaky, including the one involving Save-Version-Marker.

Regarding your query on what the "Open and Save As" mean on the File Recovery dialog - "Open" will open the auto-saved file in memory, and any subsequent saves will upload the file to the cloud. Save-As will also open the auto-saved file in memory, but it'll be treated as a new file, and will not automatically get uploaded to the Cloud. You'll only see entries in the File Recovery dialog if there are any crash recovery files available, either on the Cloud or on your machine. You can tell whether a crash recovery file is on the Cloud by the text "on the Cloud" that appears for that item in the dialog.

Can you please tell me which version of Fusion app you're using?

You may look at the version in the About dialog, or type Application.SoftwareVersion in the text command window.

Regards,

Ahsan

[Oceanconcepts]

Hi Ahsan,

The Fusion version I'm using is 1.6.356.
It does seem as if it stops saving to the cloud, but provides no notifications.. This may be coming after a PLM 360 message that resolves with restarting the program, but I can't verify that.
One other bit of information is that when I went to check the dashboard, before I could look at the actual version history for a file, Fusion prompted me to go through the entire log in process again, even though I still had a document open. Checking this morning, it still shows the last version uploaded on 4/12. I'm guessing I don't actually have cloud connectivity for that file, even though I can open and look at others?

Ron

[schneik-adsk]

Thanks for your patience with us on this.

I am wondering, did you ever rename or close this file?

[Oceanconcepts]

I have not renamed the file since it was created.  It has been closed only when I closed Fusion or it crashed.  It's been open whenever I have had Fusion open, since I started working on it. 

Just now I tried opening the archive I had saved, and I got a PLM 360 error. I was able to open it on my laptop, but not on this machine.  I am trying to quit Fusion to see if the connection will reestablish, but it looks as if I will need to force quit, as Fusion is not responding- just the spinning ball for quite a while now, and Fusion shows as not responding in Activity Monitor- I will save a sample of the process, let me know if you want it.  Nothing appears to be written to the cache folder. 

Ron