Have you ever lost your work in Solidworks simply because you forgot to save your changes? Or maybe because of Power Outage? Or maybe because SolidWorks or Windows crashed when you were in the middle of your work. Have you ever changed your design and couldn’t undo the changes to a previous model and you had to start over from the beginning?

If yes, then let me show you how you can guarantee to keep your work safe by setting up SolidWorks Backup and Auto-recover settings.

What is Auto-recover?

When you start SolidWorks after the SolidWorks has terminated unexpectedly, any available auto-recovered documents are listed under Document Recovery on the SolidWorks Recovery tab of the Task Pane. You can save an auto-recovered document either by replacing the original file or by creating a new file.

Tip: If you start a second session of the application, a message informs you that auto-recover will not work. You can continue with the second session or close the old session and start a new session.

To access Auto-recover options, go to Options icon-> System Options Tab-> Backup/Recover.

Here you will find several options:

• Save auto-recover info every n minutes: This activates auto-recovery and defines the number of minutes that elapses before an Auto-recover file is created for an open document.

(Note: Auto-recover files are automatically closed and deleted when the documents are saved.)

• Auto-recover folder: Specifies the folder in which Auto-recover files are saved.

(Note: The Auto-recover folder must be on your local system. You can’t use a network location or a mapped network drive.)

• Save auto-recover info after meshing and after running a simulation study: SolidWorks automatically saves file recovery information upon completion of meshing or running a study.

(Tip: If this option is not available, load the Solidworks Simulation Add-in. You can load the Add-in from Options Drop Down->Add-ins and then clicking the box present in front of Solidworks Simulation or you can directly add it from the Solidworks Add-in Tab.)

 

What is Backup?

This option allows you to save multiple backup copies per document based on your settings up to a maximum of 10 backups per document. Backup file stores a backup of the original document before any changes are saved to the file.

You can also set the option to automatically remove backup files that are older than certain days to free up some disk space.

Save Reminder:

And lastly, under Messages/Errors/Warnings, you can set up a save reminder notification, so that you get a notification from SolidWorks if you haven’t saved your files within the specified interval of time.

This notification will be displayed in the bottom right corner. Click on the Save button in the message to save the active document. If multiple documents are open, then the Save all button will also appear to help save all the open documents. This notification gets automatically dismissed after certain seconds if specified in the above settings.