?auto saving?

[holliebenci]

First off, I've just started working with Revit so this might be a silly question, but here it is: Why do my projects save so many times? For example, if I start a project called 'house,' after a while there's many files called 'house.0001, house.0002, house.0003' and so on. Is there a setting somewhere that I need to change? Or am I not 'shutting down' my projects properly?

TIA

[Calvn_Swing]

Tia, here's an excerpt from our in-house manual:

• Revit includes two automated backup strategies that are used depending on whether the file has been set up for Worksharing
• In files without Worksharing enabled, up to three backups are made by appending “.###” to the name of the file each time you save - the actual number is dependent upon the number of the previous backup file, and the first backup starts with “.001” - this same strategy is used for all .rfa, .rft, .rvg, and .rte files as these cannot be set up for Worksharing
• For all files with Worksharing enabled, a separate folder is made in the same directory as the file, and with the same name as the file with “_backup” appended to it; this file contains rollback information for however many iterations you have it set for in the project file (the standard is 20 iterations)
• Any backup of files with Worksharing must be done from the Central file, and must be done using the rollback feature
• You can only rollback a Central file once, having done so, you can no longer roll back further, or return to the original state
• Once the rollback is completed a new backup file is created from the current project state, so before a rollback is attempted it is advisable to copy the Central file and its associated backup folder to the clipboard and paste it in a safe place (if the rollback is successful this backup can be deleted, if the rollback is unsuccessful you can copy and paste this file to replace the changed file and attempt the rollback again)
• Rollbacks should only be attempted if the user knows what they are doing, if you have any doubt about the process please ask a more experienced Revit user for assistance

In short, it saves a backup each time you save the file. If you change the name (save as) it creates a new file, and each time you save that file a new set of backups are made. You can quickly fill a folder with useless backups at this rate. You can use windows explorer to find and select all the .xxx.rvt files you make and then delete them. I can't remember how at the moment, but it is in a post somewhere on AUGI. Do a search and see what you find...

[truevis]

... You can quickly fill a folder with useless backups at this rate. You can use windows explorer to find and select all the .xxx.rvt files you make and then delete them. I..."*.00??.r*" is the search wild-card I use for seeking old backups to delete.

[comhasse]

Actually you can set the number of backup files to be kept in the "save-as" dialog under options, where as the range is 1 to 999. One of the Revit Developers described once, what exactly the routine is. I can't find this thread right now but from what i remember it will not simply overwrite the oldest backup file with the newest one, but instead keep the one that was most current when you opened the file and continuously overwrite the more recent ones until you close the drawing, etc.

This way you should always be able to recover to the state just before you opened the drawing as well as to when the last autosave occurred.