In this lesson, I will show you how you can save your projects but also “rescue” damaged data. To begin with, I will open a few files using the Open command. Since its shortcut is on the Quick Access Toolbar, I will simply click on this icon and in the box that follows, simultaneously select several examples for the exercise. As you probably already know, for simultaneous selection you need to hold the Control key and select the desired items with the mouse. After that, you just need to click on the Open button and wait for all the elements to appear on the screen. As you can see, each of the drawings is placed in a separate segment (Tab) so I can easily switch from one to another.

I will take this opportunity to make one change, ie. to use the Erase command to remove the entire element, e.g. this chair. This means launching the appropriate function, selecting the desired element and pressing Enter. Since the chair has disappeared from the screen, it wouldn’t hurt to save a new version of this drawing. To that end, I can use the Save command, whereby the old version of the file will be automatically deleted and a new one placed in its place. If that doesn’t suit you and for some reason you want to keep the old version, use the Save As function located on the same palette. I will opt for this option and add a double to the existing file name. Now all I have to do is click the Save button and complete this operation.

Any change I make after that, whether it’s new geometry or a simple projection change, will be a novelty to AutoCAD that requires redrawing. This is confirmed by the small star that has now appeared behind the data representing the name of the drawing. On this occasion, instead of the Save function, I will use its faster variant – Quick Save, by entering the letters Q and S on the keyboard and finally pressing the Spacebar.

If you don’t want to keep track of whether and when you saved all the changes, there is an option to hit it automatically. In that case, you need to select the Options button from the main menu and go to the box that includes all operating parameters. After that you can go to the section called Open end Save and look for the Automatic save option. For me, it is already on, so I can only change the interval in which automatic recording is performed. As you can see, there is a possibility to save a backup copy of the previous version (Backup) which can sometimes get you out of a difficult situation. There is no need to change any of these parameters for now, so I will click the Cancel button and close this box.

To show you how this all works, I’m going to hold down the Control and S keys at the same time and record a new version of this drawing. If I then switch to the folder where the exercise files are located, you will see two new elements appear in it. These are the new version of this drawing with a double at the end and its previous edition, which differs from other drawings in its extension (bak – short for Back up). If at some point it turns out that this backup version was better than the one you are currently working with, you can easily convert it to a normal drawing. It is enough to write dwg instead of bak in its name and thus turn it into a regular AutoCAD file. Unfortunately, you’ll have to pay for this level of security in terms of disk space, but that shouldn’t be a problem. If for any reason you don’t want to rely on automatics, you can turn this option off at any time. I will do this by using the O+P+Enter shortcut so that I can then turn off these two options.

In order not to be left without any protection, I signed up for a service called AutoCAD 360, which means that every time I start the Save command, a copy of the same drawing will be placed on the shared server, that is. Cloud.

Even if for any reason one of your files happens to become unreadable or corrupted, there is a feature that you can use to save whatever is left of it. That’s what the Recover command is for, and I’ll show you how to use it on an example. To begin with, I’ll enter its name and press Enter to bring up a file selection box on the screen. For this occasion, I have prepared a file that has certain flaws, so I will select it and wait for AutoCAD to do the rest of the work. It may take a little longer because it is necessary to carry out a detailed check of all available data in order to finally produce a report containing information on the number of errors found and corrected. In this case, everything ended in the best possible way, which means that my drawing is complete again.