topic Re: WHY NO AUTOSAVE????? in Inventor Forum

WHY NO AUTOSAVE?????

toddhamlin — Tue, 13 Oct 2020 18:40:08 GMT

WHY ********** is there no AUTOSAVE while using INVENTOR???????? DONT tell me save every command, thats crap. THIS SHOULD BE ADDRESSED NOW, NOT LAST YEAR, NOT LAST RELEASE, NOW!!! I LOST A WHOLE AFTERNOON'S WORK BECAUSE OF THIS. THIS IS, EXCUSE MY LANGUAGE.....BULL****!!!!!

Re: WHY NO AUTOSAVE?????

johnsonshiue — Mon, 12 Oct 2020 21:50:56 GMT

Hi Todd,

This is a limitation in Inventor at the moment. We have heard this request for many years but we don't have a good solution unfortunately. There are multiple technical challenges on enabling Auto-Save in Inventor. First, Inventor has one Undo stream for one session, not per document. When you open several files, you can undo all the way back to zero documents. When you save a file, the Undo stream may be chopped off. Also, if you automatically save multiple files, the Undo stream could be interrupted leading to more instability.

Another issue is related to file referencing and associativity. Inventor assembly and drawing reference model files extensively. When Auto-Save kicked in, should all related files be saved or only the active document be saved? The user will need to make a decision on the spot. Arbitrarily saving the files can lead to corruption. There are custom add-ins enabling Auto-Save. But, I have seen corrupted files caused by such tools.

Like I mentioned earlier, we don't have a good solution at the moment.

Many thanks!

Re: WHY NO AUTOSAVE?????

HAFA12 — Tue, 13 Oct 2020 07:59:26 GMT

Autosave might be nice, but also get your workflow figured out.

There is no excuse for not saving your work regularly.

Hit ctrl+s every once in a while so you don't get yourself into incidents like this...

Re: WHY NO AUTOSAVE?????

JDMather — Tue, 13 Oct 2020 11:20:10 GMT

There most certainly is a simple solution that my students have utilized for 25 years in multiple CAD softwares - take the responsibility upon yourself to save often.

You should never lose any more work than you are willing to do over.

Re: WHY NO AUTOSAVE?????

0x3FA5 — Tue, 13 Oct 2020 18:09:51 GMT

Inventor has one Undo stream for one session, not per document.

This is very, very bad.

This is very, very unintuitive.

When you work in object environment and have other documents opened, you expect to undo the one you are working in.

Having one Undo stream per session is very, very unique.

But it is very, very bad software architecture design.

Re: WHY NO AUTOSAVE?????

johnsonshiue — Tue, 13 Oct 2020 18:23:50 GMT

Hi! I know you are generally negative toward Inventor. I am not surprised with your comments. However, I am not sure how you correlate "undo stream per session" with "poor architecture." Also, lack of Auto-Save isn't unique to Inventor. Most of the Auto-Save supporting CAD systems store all design data in one file, which makes it more straightforward to save automatically.

I could be wrong but I am not aware of any feature-based parametric solid modeling CAD system supporting Auto-Save. Undo per session or undo per doc is a design choice. Either has advantages. When you actively edit multiple associative documents, undo per session helps make the process streamlined. Undo per doc works the best, when each file is independent, and the workflows are mostly confined within each doc. Inventor and most equivalent CAD systems are not like that. Files are referenced in multiple places and contexts. If it was straightforward, it would have been done already. We had a few attempts to do that in the past but we were not able to find a good solution.

Many thanks!

Re: WHY NO AUTOSAVE?????

CGBenner — Tue, 13 Oct 2020 18:52:41 GMT

The advice I used myself, and taught all of my users: Save early - Save often!

Re: WHY NO AUTOSAVE?????

mfurches — Tue, 13 Oct 2020 19:40:46 GMT

Solidworks has had autosave for many years. It works just fine.

Re: WHY NO AUTOSAVE?????

Frederick_Law — Tue, 13 Oct 2020 19:52:41 GMT

Because you will not want autosave when working on assemblies.

If you don't know why, use any 3D CAD software for more time.

For one, you could never set a correct autosave timer that won't get in your way.

Re: WHY NO AUTOSAVE?????

Anonymous — Tue, 13 Oct 2020 20:14:21 GMT

Agreed, there are also a lot of issues when trying to handle constraints within assemblies. Inventor Pro feels archaic compared to Solidworks, hopefully they figure out their ancient architecture sometime in the next decade.

Re: WHY NO AUTOSAVE?????

rhasell — Tue, 13 Oct 2020 23:27:19 GMT

Pull your head in mate, this is a user forum.

CTRL-S is the only autosave needed.

Autosave will do more damage than good, when you realise that autosave has saved all your work just as you broke your model, and you need to roll back or just quit and start again, but now you can't because autosave has saved the damaged model, how much time have you lost now?

Re: WHY NO AUTOSAVE?????

Frederick_Law — Wed, 14 Oct 2020 13:03:24 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Agreed, there are also a lot of issues when trying to handle constraints within assemblies. Inventor Pro feels archaic compared to Solidworks, hopefully they figure out their ancient architecture sometime in the next decade.

Really, join me in SW forum.

You'll love all the SW nicknames.

And Autosave is recommended to turn off for performance.

Re: WHY NO AUTOSAVE?????

Anonymous — Wed, 14 Oct 2020 15:31:03 GMT

Thankfully Solidwork's auto-save feature is robust enough to save copies at different intervals, this is particularly useful if a component you add breaks the assembly. Everyone that is touting that it affects performance have no real understanding of how versatile the feature is in Solidworks. The performance complaint might be a huge aspect in Inventor, I've yet to run into issues using this feature in Solidworks while editing assemblies in magnitudes larger than that of Inventor (and Inventor still struggles with some of these smaller assemblies).

Incredible how software worth thousands of dollars mitigates its responsibility to innovate by claiming to "just do it this way".

Inventor 2019 and I cannot define a distance mate between two holes? Goodness gracious. Might aswell rename Inventor Professional to Inventor Junior.

Re: WHY NO AUTOSAVE?????

Frederick_Law — Wed, 14 Oct 2020 15:50:45 GMT

SW auto-recover doesn't save copies. It try to save current files and attempt to recover after crash.

It is not, autosave.

Backup does save copies, same as IV OldVersions.

Both create copies when user save the file.

User set how many copies to keep.

Re: WHY NO AUTOSAVE?????

Anonymous — Wed, 14 Oct 2020 16:00:51 GMT

Apologies, you are correct. I meant to say the backup feature, I love that thing. On my other work station I have it save about 5-6 copies at varying intervals, it has saved me countless times when experimenting with assemblies.

Re: WHY NO AUTOSAVE?????

Frederick_Law — Wed, 14 Oct 2020 16:07:11 GMT

And IV has the same function of OldVersions.

Both saved me more then a few times.

I use 5 copies on both.

IV keep OldVersions in a folder make it easier to find the files you want.

Re: WHY NO AUTOSAVE?????

Anonymous — Wed, 14 Oct 2020 16:08:59 GMT

Good to know, thanks for that information. Now if only they could add some basic constraints to make assemblies easier, I'm struggling with the trial and error of aligning things. 😞

Re: WHY NO AUTOSAVE?????

andrewiv — Wed, 14 Oct 2020 16:58:38 GMT

I think the "distance mate between two holes" that you are looking for is the insert constraint.

Re: WHY NO AUTOSAVE?????

JDMather — Wed, 14 Oct 2020 17:03:07 GMT

@mfurches wrote:

Solidworks has had autosave for many years. It works just fine.

@Anonymous wrote:

Thankfully Solidwork's auto-save feature is robust enough ...

Hmmm, the pros over here http://forum.solidworks.com don't seem to use it???

Re: WHY NO AUTOSAVE?????

Anonymous — Wed, 14 Oct 2020 17:06:59 GMT

Hi, my description may have been off but I've attached an illustration of what I'm trying to do.

For instance, I have two holes (brackets) that need to be distanced in relation to the hole centers. To accomplish this I used a flush constraint with a defined offset, however the additional step of needed to subtract is rather cumbersome when dealing with different sized brackets. I'd like to accomplish this in the assembly enviornment and not in the sketch enviornment as I've illustrated.