Autosave - ARGH!

[oliver]

I'm not a programmer but there must be a better way of implementing Autosave. It's unacceptable to

• close all open dialogs (e.g. EditPoly-tools like Bevel and so on) when the save kicks in
• take forever on heavy scenes
• crash the program if the user coincidentally starts a demanding task at exactly the second it starts to save
• ...

Isn't it possible to do the saving as a background process with a kind of copy of the scene? Or somehow else? Anyhow?!

I'm happy that there is AutoSave - it proofed useful several times for me - but at what cost?!

[RobH2]

I don't disagree that it might need to be implemented better. I'm hoping the next version will see some tweaking of it. However, I think something else might be going on. It saves for me no matter what dialog boxes are open. I don't have to close anything. It waits till I'm not clicking or working to unpause and then save, but it doesn't seem to take any more time than the normal save 'CTRL+S' seems to. 

I haven't noticed if a crash has occurred at the moment it tried to save. I'll keep an eye on this issue and if I find anything out I'll come back. I know this doesn't help you, but maybe I'll run across someone who's fixed it. 

[oliver]

Yes, it saves no matter what dialog boxes are open - but when it starts saving it closes them. I haven't noticed this for some time now but it used to close the dialog box but kept the tool active (e.g. Bevel). To continue I had to click on Bevel again although it was already previewing - confusing.
And yes, it takes the same time as the ordinary Save (naturally) - with a very large scene this can take up to 30s and more. If only this could (somehow) happen in the background...
The crash happened while I was dragging an multi-million-poly-object onto another layer and the AutoSave kicked in. A error-message was displayed that told me that too much error-messages were triggered - bummer I didn't screenshot it, would have been a cool t-shirt...

Hopefully AutoSave will get polished a bit, I don't want to work without it anymore.

[RobH2]

Ok, I see what you mean. I think the things like 'Chamfer' and 'Bridge'  when open to the spinners are called 'Caddys.' I see what you mean. I opened 'Chamfer' and put some settings in. When Autosave saved, it closed it. That is frustrating. I've never noticed that. It happens the same in 2023 and 2024. I've gotten so used to hitting 'Hold' that I really don't pay attention to Autosave. 

I can see that if at the wrong time, it could cost a lot of time to have to redo something. I mean, we've had autosave for a long time now. It's the changes that supposedly were to make it better that are causing the problems right? Back before the "new and improved" Autosave, did you have problems as well?

Maybe go to the 'Ideas' forum and outline what's wrong with it and see if you can get enough votes to raise some eyebrows. 

[oliver]

Ah, "Caddies" - I'll remember that. I used to call them PE (property editor), but that's been another software's lingo. 
I had AutoSave turned off prior to it's prominent placement on the main UI ("Pfah, I know when to save.") Now I'm very happy having it on. But you experienced yourself how annoying some recurring situations can be - now imagine the confusion of my noobish students when the caddie closes but the tool itself is still in preview mode... 
Thank you Rob for sharing my experiences 🙂

[RobH2]

Ha, yes, there are enough things to scramble noobies brains than Autosave making things disapper into thin air...lol...

I hope they modify it so that it can save in the background and never bother anyone. I know that I can make an "Image" of my hard drive while still working. The backup software does some sort of fancy copy and tracking so it can Image it even if files are open. Max could possibly take advantage of that software capability. 

Anyway, off to work and to my "hold" and "fetch" tasks...as, I turn Autosave off...