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Old 20th February 2008, 03:39 PM   #1
Mossie
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Default Autosave

I've been doing some detailed work and managed to loose about 1 hours work as the program crashed, not sure on the reason for the crash and this left me thinking.

Can we have an autosave with configurable timing, between 5 minutes to say 30 minutes ?
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Old 20th February 2008, 05:51 PM   #2
captainpeter
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Default Re: Autosave

Indeed, this has happened to me numerous times, especially with complex models. Which brings me to a another missing feature.
I usually work on quite complex models which include many animations for X-Plane. It is not really unusual to have over 2000 objects in such an .ac file while modelling. Every time I open such a document I wished AC3D would retain the visibility settings of groups/objetcs after saving.
This would be a huge timesaver.
Another nice option would be optional colour coding of groups/objects in the Hierarchy window.

cheers
Peter
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Old 26th February 2008, 09:58 PM   #3
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Default Re: Autosave

I second this, an autosave with configurable timing between 1 and 30 minutes, perhaps?
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Old 15th March 2015, 11:54 AM   #4
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Default Re: Autosave

Quote:
Originally Posted by captainpeter View Post
Indeed, this has happened to me numerous times, especially with complex models. Which brings me to a another missing feature.
I usually work on quite complex models which include many animations for X-Plane. It is not really unusual to have over 2000 objects in such an .ac file while modelling. Every time I open such a document I wished AC3D would retain the visibility settings of groups/objetcs after saving.
This would be a huge timesaver.
Another nice option would be optional colour coding of groups/objects in the Hierarchy window.

cheers
Peter
Same problem here. I guess it was never addressed.
I need to hide objects and then after reloading the ac file, all is visible.
That is a major missing feature for pay program.
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Old 15th March 2015, 05:33 PM   #5
captainpeter
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Default Re: Autosave

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Originally Posted by arb View Post
Same problem here. I guess it was never addressed.
I need to hide objects and then after reloading the ac file, all is visible.
That is a major missing feature for pay program.
My current work-around for this issue is to keep geometry I currently do not need to work on in a seperate group which can be hidden with one click after opening the .ac file.

If the menu-item 'select/unselect objects by name' would allow a wildcard character to search for objects with a specific name-suffix one could select and hide any number of objects easily after adding distinct suffix like '_HIDDEN'.

I'm all for Group/Object visibility settings stored within the .ac file.

cheers
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Old 23rd March 2015, 08:36 PM   #6
arb
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Default Re: Autosave

Hi Peter,

Sorry for a very long delay in reply.
I was fighting ac3d, ha, ha.

Your workaround sounds great but I I can use it on animations.
As you know objects have to belong to a particular groups and breaking that will make animation useless.
Unless there is something I missed in that area, please let me know if I did.

The great thing I have found out recently ( my friend's advice) was that you can drag objects into any group you want.

I made a gear animation and later on I wanted to reexport objects from Blender with new UV maps.
I was ready to destroy all animation and after exporting new objects , make teh animations again.

Knowing that I can drag the object into any animation, I import it to my gear.ac file, rename to something with suffix N like main_gear_Door_N, move it above or below old main_gear_Door in Hierarchy Tree and delete the old one.
Works like a charm saving a lot of time.

I wonder if the Group/Object visibility settings will ever be implemented in new versions of ac3d.
Let's keep fingers crossed.

Cheers, AJ
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Old 24th March 2015, 04:08 AM   #7
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Default Re: Autosave

You can add autosave with a script see here (search is your friend):

http://www.inivis.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5938

(it should still work on later AC3Ds)

Saving the visibilty of objects might cause problems e.g. if you send someone else an AC3D file and it contains all sorts of hidden stuff, which they then export to another application. The main stumbling block is that it would require a change to the AC3D format. It's open for discussion here though.

The next release of AC3D will include wildcards on select-by-name
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Old 25th March 2015, 04:06 PM   #8
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Default Re: Autosave

Well, what about storing the visibility setting (and maybe others) in a separate file?
In the end setting something to hidden is more a personal setting for a scene than part of the object's description, right?
With two files you could still decide whether you want to share the object only or add the settings. Locally and for your own work the settings could be loaded and if they are f**ed up you still have a perfect valid ac file. If you share your model in the ac format you don't have to bother about visibility as it's not necessarily part of it (unless you share your model settings file as well on purpose).
Very roughly that would be similar to the obj/mat file setup although in this case the settings file is not strictly necessary.

What do you think?
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Old 25th March 2015, 04:10 PM   #9
arb
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Default Re: Autosave

Thank you Andy,

Yes , I know that scripts can come to a closer solution but more straightforward approach would be definitely appreciated.

Wildcards sound good.

Cheers, AJ
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Old 27th March 2015, 02:14 PM   #10
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Default Re: Autosave

Quote:
Originally Posted by Andy View Post
Saving the visibilty of objects might cause problems e.g. if you send someone else an AC3D file and it contains all sorts of hidden stuff, which they then export to another application. The main stumbling block is that it would require a change to the AC3D format. It's open for discussion here though.
Is there a provision to add comments to an .ac file? Something like a '#' line prefix? If yes it could be used to indicate that the following object/group should be hidden initially. Or maybe add 'hidden=1' at the end of the 'object data' section.
The x-plane plugin stores quite a bit of information there though which I'd rather not loose ;-)

Quote:
Originally Posted by Andy View Post
The next release of AC3D will include wildcards on select-by-name
thanks
peter
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