Autosave is bad.  The default out of the box condition should be off ... it’s the idiot button for beginners.

Who doesn’t know to save before trying that boolean operation you just know is going to fail?
Who doesn’t automatically save after working for a while and getting to a good stopping point?
Who wants to get interrupted when working on large files? - think minutes of saving to the local disk for me.
Who can’t do a cntrl-s before getting a cup of coffee and locking the screen?
Who wants to overwrite the file if they’re just looking at data and jacking with layers/objects?
Buy an UPS

Save often ...manually.  No autosave, no prompts to save except on exit.

Ozboz 14 November 2008 07:40 PM

Autosave is bad.  The default out of the box condition should be off ... it’s the idiot button for beginners.

Who doesn’t know to save before trying that boolean operation you just know is going to fail?
Who doesn’t automatically save after working for a while and getting to a good stopping point?
Who wants to get interrupted when working on large files? - think minutes of saving to the local disk for me.
Who can’t do a cntrl-s before getting a cup of coffee and locking the screen?
Who wants to overwrite the file if they’re just looking at data and jacking with layers/objects?
Buy an UPS

Save often ...manually.  No autosave, no prompts to save except on exit.

Amen, BUT always use iterative saves because Max corrupts files from time to time, especially if it’s crashed.

my autoback up is messed up aswell, says 5mins but doesnt create a single one in like 15mins or more (and this on max 9)

maybe its due to the fact that i got used to save each 10secs, lol

Autosave does not save onto the original file itself. Instead it saves to a folder as autobakup_xx.max. You can set as many autobakup as
you like. Opening multiple windows of 3dsmax is used to be dangerous as it only save one of the active windows now autobakup
tries to save all active windows that are opened.

My setting are 15mins interval and 9 backup files.

If your backup file takes a long time to get itself saved it is probably due to missing maps or file links when it is trying to save. Try to check
for missing maps and clear the material slots that aren’t active but is pointing to a bitmap material.

My 2 cents

NO AUTOSAVE IS NOT STUPID IT GOT ME OUT OF THE WATER MANY TIMES, IT IS A GOOD TOOL EVEN IF IT DOESN’T HAVE
BUILD IN ARTIFICAL INTELLIGENCE. AI IS TOO EXPENSIVE TO WRITE, UNLESS WE ARE READY TO PAY MORE?? DO YOU WANNA
PAY MORE? NO I WILL GO WITH THE ANALOG ... :)

Studio Max 2009 x64
X5000 Chipset | Dual Core Intel 5140 | 4G RAM | Nvidia FX3450 | WindowsXP 64

I completely agree with Gary.  Max’s implementation of Autosave is horrible.  How about this one…
I Save a file and two seconds later it backs it up?
I open a file and two seconds later it backs it up?
Shouldn’t the timer reset after these operations?!

I tried writing a maxscript to force the timer to reset on save and load, but the maxscript autosave functions don’t seem to do what they are supposed to. Here’s what I tried:

As for only saving if the scene has changed, that couldn’t be that hard for them to do.  After all a maxscript function to check exactly that has existed for a long time, getSaveRequired().