Automatic Recovery Save not working

[kevinorban]

This is a problem I have been having for some time but it has recently become very problematic. The first issue is that Fusion constantly freezes (spinning rainbow wheel of doom on the Mac) and will not recover from it. It happens for just about any reason (moving a component, renaming a component, assigning a material to a component, starting a sketch, extruding, creating a box, etc.) and it is completely random and unpredictable. It happens in every file I have made so it's not one design that's a problem. It has also happened over numerous, numerous updates. I have set the automatic recovery as low as it will go in hopes that it will keep me from losing my work as I often go more than 10 minutes while forgetting to save (shame on me I know). However, every time I force quit and restart there is NO recovery file available even though it's been well over 5 minutes.

I have now lost my work more than 20 times this week and it's becoming a serious hindrance to my productivity. Why is Fusion not creating a recovery file? Why can't I set the save time to less than 5 minutes (how about 1 minute, hint ,hint). I am now forced to save after every operation I perform which is not conducive to remaining focused on what I'm designing. The other design programs I have used allow me to create a backup every 1 minute and it actually creates it so I don't have to worry about constantly having to save. Is this a known problem? Is there any hope that it will be improved? One of the appeals of the cloud based software is that I will never lose my work cause it's always backed up, but that ideal is far from reality at least in my experience with the software. I don't see why Fusion can't be set to save every 1 minute (even a local backup) and actually accomplish the task. If anyone can advise me on this issue it would be greatly appreciated.

Kevin

[James.Youmatz]

Hi @kevinorban,

I'm sorry to hear that is happening! By no means is this how auto-save should work. I actually just started writing up a "what to expect from Auto-Save guide" and honestly would appreciate any feedback you have about it. One thing I did want to see however are your diagnostic log files. Can you please go to the Help menu within Fusion and collect these and post them here? It will give me time stamps and indications of failure with auto-save.

Regarding how auto-save works, it should work as:

• Tries to save based on preference time interval (5 minute default)
• Auto-save will be suspended if an operation is happening such as Extrude
  • Retries will happen every minute until it can successfully auto-save
  • If it cannot within a time frame (roughly 7 minutes) due to a command being open, it will AUTOMATICALLY auto-save as soon as that command is exited out of
• Auto-saves are deleted upon manually saving the file OR an intentional exit of Fusion (not a crash or force quit)

This last talking point is what intrigues me - how are you quitting Fusion when it gets stuck or hung? This may be imperative to solving this issue (again, not sure until I see the log files however). Also, does it say zero recoverable files when you go to the File menu and select Recover Documents?

Thanks,

[innovatenate]

Personally, I think auto-save is a confusing title for this feature. I think it should be called recovery instead. The "auto-save" was changed during the beta phase of Fusion. The auto-save feature was modified so that it no longer saves versions in the cloud. There were lots of considerations for this change, network usage, performance, data management, etc... 

What auto-save does today is that it saves a local copy of a recovery file in the recovery directory. This recovery directory doesn't sync to the cloud. Only the normal Save command does that.

You can forcibly create a recovery file or "auto-save," at any point while you're working. See How to manually save a recovery file for more info. I'd recommend using this feature more often.

If you look through the application log files for Autodesk Fusion 360, you will see that the autosave attempts are clearly recorded. Try searching for the below lines in the log to see what happened.

Started auto-saving   

Finished auto-saving

There are many things that can cancel or prevent an auto-save from occurring.

1. If you are actively in a command, the auto-save or recovery save attempt will cancel and then retry again once every minute until the next recovery save interval.
2. If the design is being edited during auto-save or recovery process (e.g.. 50% of the recovery has been written to disk and then an operation begins, then the recovery save or auto-save is cancelled).
3. Closing the application without saving a design will automatically remove any existing recovery file
4. Closing the design without saving will automatically remove the existing recovery file

Please note that all of the events are recorded in the log file. 

There are some safeguards in place. When an auto-save is canceled due to option 1 & 2 above, it will continue to attempt to auto-save on a 1 minute interval once the user finishes the current command. If too many failures happen in a row, a forced auto-save will happen as soon as the operation is finished. However, this does requires a state of quiescence to successfully complete he save.

There are some scenarios, dubbed internally as "Kevin Schneider" syndrome, where working so fast that an entire hour or more can go buy without a recovery file or auto-save being created. 

Some Tips:

• Use the Manual Recovery Save
• Use the regular Save command
• Don't rely on auto-save process
• Don't leave dialogs open unnecessarily (e.g. editing an Extrude command)
• If you're taking a break, leave Fusion in a state where the auto-save/recovery process can do its thing uninterrupted

With regards to some of your performance issues, I've reviewed some of the error reports you submitted to Autodesk. There were only two reports submitted. You should keep submitting those since we can use them to help investigate what is happening when the crashing occurs.

There was one linked issue that looks like a conflict between some components associated with materials and auto-save. The development team is rolling out at least one fix in November to see if it helps subside that particular problem. 

This is a bit of a guess, but it looks like you may be trying to write some fairly large files to the disk and force quitting in the middle of the save  or auto-save process. Are you by any chance working with large mesh files? If you export your designs to an archive file, how large are the file sizes?

Thanks,

[haveoneforme]

Automatic recovery has stopped working on my version of Fusion 360 . I've just lost hours of work and even after rebooting it still doesn't work. 

This thread is 5 years old and still this feature does not work properly.  Seriously how can this feature not work , it's just too important not to work.

The whole support system on Fusion it poor. Got a problem , don't worry there's no one to help but here's a 5 year old thread. 

Thanks