Incremental Saving
rtweed
Posts: 0
OK, I have a couple of questions about this one.
Firstly, is there any way to tell whether incremental saving is turned or or off? As this is a toggle, normally there should be some kind of checkbox indicator in the menu to show that it's turned on. However, when I select it, nothing happens, so it might be on, or it might not be. I don't know if Hexagon remembers the setting from the last time you ran Hexagon, or the last time you saved the file you're working on.
As it stands, I have no way to know what it's going to do, and if it does the wrong thing, it could overwrite my previously good save with a bad save, destroying all my work. This can be a lot worse than simply forgetting to save, if you've been working on something for a long time and don't have backups.
Secondly, what precisely does it do? Bear with me here - this is going to get technical...
I believe that the term "incremental saving" is in fact a slight mis-translation from French (in much the same way as all the "Validate" buttons should really be "OK" buttons) because incremental saving actually has a specific meaning that is probably not what Hexagon does, but I'd like to be sure.
What incremental saving means is that new data is written to the end of the file on each save, so that the file still contains all the old versions. Essentially this means, if you have the right tools, you have infinite undo capability. The same thing in databases is called a transaction log: it allows you to reconstruct any point in time, although normally you will just see the most recent version.
The disadvantage of incremental saving is that the file gets bigger and bigger forever. It also becomes harder to process, so eventually programs tend to crash if they use it.
Now, you might just be thinking this isn't a real thing outside of databases, but Adobe Director is one example of an application that does use real incremental saving. There's a second menu option called "save and compact" which gets rid of all the past save history, giving you a smaller file. It's necessary to do this occasionally or Director starts to crash, a lot.
So I really want to know if Hexagon really supports incremental saving, or if the menu option is really just for "periodic" auto-saving. If it is doing incremental saves, how to do you compact the file?
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Comments
Go to Edit > Preference Editor > Misc, and check the box labelled 'File Name' As the tool tip says this 'Shows or hides the filename in the current 3D view' The incremented number of the save will be shown at the bottom of the viewport.
Incremental save is not toggled as far as I know, you use File > Incremental saving (Ctrl+Shift+S) when using that option, and either Save or Save As when not.
If you load an incremental save, you do NOT have the option to use Undo on that file, it loads in the same state it was saved in. If you want an earlier version, you should use an earlier incremental save number.
You could do this yourself without using incremental save, by changing the number at the end of the filename, using Save As.
Thanks, but that doesn't answer either of my questions.
To be clear, I'm not looking for an infinite undo feature, I was just using that to illustrate what a true incremental save actually means, as many people won't have encountered it before (although "incremental backup" is another, more common example). Interestingly, Director doesn't allow undos with it's incremental save feature either - it's just a hold-over from when hard drives were really slow and someone thought it would be a good idea to make saves faster (which it isn't). They might have intended to add a history feature in the future, but they never got around to it.
Still, I had a look at the filename preference and I have that checked, but for some reason I don't see any filename near any of the viewports, nor do I see a save number. Maybe when I rearranged my panels for two monitors, I accidentally closed an important one? Any chance of a screenshot showing where it's supposed to be?
Also the point about incremental save toggling is that it is a toggled state: meaning it's either on or it's off. That's completely different to "save" and "save as" which perform the action once, there and then, but do not have any state. The problem is, there's no indicator to show whether it is currently on or off, so I have no idea whether Hexagon is suddenly going to save my changes without me knowing about it. I don't care too much which mode it's in, as long as I know which, so I know when to back up my work!
I could do a bunch of tests to figure all this out, but it would take hours of making very specific methodical changes, leaving it for a while and checking what happens to the file size. However, if the setting just isn't turning on for some reason then it might not do anything (which might explain why there's no check or tick in the menu).
It's always possible that the feature is broken in the particular version of Hexagon I've got installed (which jftr, is 2.5.1.79 on Windows 7, 64-bit). The feature isn't even mentioned in the official manual (the PDF). It's in the online guide, but not covered in much detail. So it's probably not high on the DAZ testing priorities.
It is neither on nor off, it is available to use all the time in exactly the same way as Save or Save As Hexagon does not have an auto save function that I know of, so the only time it saves, is when you tell it to. I think you are over thinking this.
The image below shows the filename My_Cube which has already been saved under that name. The asterisk to the right of the filename, shows that it has been changed in some way since it was last saved, and you could then use Incremental Save to add a number to the end of that filename, as in 'My_Cube00' Or, as I explained previously, you could do it yourself by using Save As.
Save (Ctrl+S) does not give any warnings about overwriting existing files, but Save As (Ctrl+E) does.
Ah, OK. The reason I was confused is that it's doing neither incremental saving, nor what the online guide says it does. To quote the (incorrect) docs:
Source: http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/artzone/pub/software/hexagon/reference/menufile#incremental_saving
Your description is what it actually does. Really the menu option should be called "Incremental Save" or "Save and Increment" not incremental saving, which implies a toggle setting (and is probably why whoever wrote the documentation got it wrong).
Sidenote: I notice that the online docs are written with Dokuwiki, but they don't appear to be publicly editable. I'm not sure if that's intentional, i.e., is the wiki intentionally restricted to Daz staff or is it supposed to be possible for anyone to correct mistakes like this?
I don't know the answer to that I'm afraid. Perhaps a mod would know, or you may need to contact Support using the Help option at the top of this screen, and then use the Contact Us option. DAZ 3D employees do not normally read these forums, but do pop in sometimes.
I might open a support ticket requesting that they fix the docs.