AutoCAD files reverting to previous save

[david.sherierW6D2G]

An AutoCAD 2018 user in my office has had this particular problem a couple times. We will save the drawing, then come back to it later and his edits are not there. It seems like the file is opening an old version of itself instead of opening the most recent save. Has anyone seen this before?

[SeeMSixty7 · Accepted solution]

Could be a few things. 

Sometimes users will open files read only, and just click through dialog messages out of habit and not read the messages.

Sometimes another user will interrupt the edits by using refedit, which used to have a messed up non locking edit scheme, and then user a saves thinking they are done, then user b(refedit user) exist and saves and did nothing, therefor reverting back to the original drawing. I tell my users not to use refedit. If they need to work on an xref, open it!

Could be the user opened a recover drawing when prompted by autocad and then saved the drawing to the temp folder and was never actually in the real drawing.

Hopefully that gives you something to look for.

[david.sherierW6D2G]

I will speak with the user and see if any of those things could have happened. He is a fairly competent user, so I don't think he would have made mistakes like that. Any other ideas or reasons ACAD would behave this way?

[RobDraw]

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@david.sherierW6D2G wrote:

Any other ideas or reasons ACAD would behave this way?

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AutoCAD does not behave in this way. It's simple file management. The user should be paying attention to any warnings given saying that the file could not be saved as specified and it will be saved... Files don't just get reverted back to previous versions without some sort of interaction.

[pendean]

Have you seen this problem for yourself in action? I recommend you do. A second pair of eyes might reveal something.

Are they on a MAC?

Are they using their own backup/restore system?

Is the problem when the PC snoozes/wakes up?
Or do they leave a file open overnight and it happens?

Do they regularly and manually save (in which case there should be a record BAK file they can rename)? Or does everyone believe in the childish magic of autosave in AUtoCAD?

Do they call all of their files (for example) FILE.DWG and all folders FOLDER, and are perhaps getting lost on where they are making changes and where they are not?

[ara_neresesian]

Hi

Turn on Automatic save with less minutes between saves, and create backup copy

at list you will have the last Autosave.

[RobDraw]

By default, autosaves are deleted when AutoCAD is closed without a crash. They are not meant to be used as a back-up. They are there for recovery purposes in case of a crash.

[pmscampino]

The same thing happened to me, a network file finished one day, the next day the file was different and had the wrong recording time. I know that the changes were saved correctly because the .bak file with the corrections made was in the same location and with the correct saving time.(wich allowed me to recover my changes)

Could it be related to the way Windows saves files? Can another PC, previously disconnected from the network, revert de files to the previous state when connecting at a later time ?

I had a similar problem with an external drive and discovered that the problem was related to the way Windows shuts down (or doesn't actually) and how USB devices are disconnected. What I discovered was that when "turning off" the PC (let's call it the 1st PC) with the external disk connected, depending on the shutdown and USB settings, Windows takes a photograph of the disk structure. If I remove the disk and make changes to the files on a 2nd PC, reconnect the disk to the 1st PC, when I connect it the disk appears to be unchanged by the 2nd PC. The conclusion I reached was that Windows thinks that the disk was never disconnected from the first PC, and as when recording files the empty space on the disk is used, the previous version is still there to increase the confusion.

I already managed to solve it with external USB disks, with files on the network I don't see how to solve it.