Improvements to Auto-Save or Recovery Files

[innovatenate]

Whenever a design has a pending edit to be saved, there is a small * asterisk next to the name in the design tab. This tells me that there is a pending change that needs to be saved and synced to the cloud storage.

In addition to this visual clue, I'd like to see another icon that shows whether or not a recovery or "auto-save" version has been created in the recovery directory (locally). It could be a separate icon like my doctored image below...  Or perhaps the asterisk could be colored red or green to indicate that there is a save pending to cloud storage, but also indicate the status of a recovery version at the same time.

With this visual cue it would also help to clear up if a manual recovery save (Mac: Command + Shift + S or Windows: CTRL + SHIFT + S) was successful or performed recently.

In addition to this visual cue of an existing recovery document, I believe it would be better to not remove recovery files when Fusion is shut down or a design is closed. I think a successful save to the cloud should be perhaps the only exception to this.

Instead, I would propose a time based system that would leave recovery files in the recovery directory for a period of time specified by the preferences or by preference setting that determines the maximum amount of disk space that the recovery directory should use.

This request is based on numerous discussions I've encountered in the forum. 

• https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-360-design-validate/improve-auto-save-and-recovery/td-p/539156...
• https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-360-support/automatic-recovery-save-not-working/td-p/7475485
• https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-360-support/recovery-file-not-saved-after-crash/m-p/7177171#M5...
• https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-360-support/can-automatic-recovery-be-trusted/m-p/7008700#M171

I believe these two things or at least one of them things would reduce confusion around the "auto-save" functionality in Fusion 360 in a big way. 

Thanks for voting this Idea up if you like this suggestion!

[Anonymous]

If as you say, "I believe it would be better to not remove recovery files when Fusion is shut down or a design is closed."  It leads me to believe there can be no recovery files after fusion 360 crashes the system and has to be restarted, hence it is 'shut down'.  Is this a Catch22 situation or have I misunderstood something somewhere?

[innovatenate]

@Anonymous I'm guessing that you're misinterpreting what I'm saying. When you close a design, close fusion, or Save a design, the version of the recovery file that is there is cleaned up and removed. I'm not talking about crashing in this case. I'm talking about actions taken by the user to close or save. It wouldn't be much a recovery system if Fusion deleted a recovery file upon crash..  Hope that helps..

[Anonymous]

An automatic backup that is taken  after every user determined  time period over-writing the previous one is a very useful safety net, which is what I thought happened, but obviously not at present.

[LibertyMachine]

I would like to see improvements to the Save system in general. Also like the idea of not getting rid of them immediately. However, that could result in a fair amount of storage space (I know storage is cheap, more concerned if it's kept in cache and hits the performance)