Inventor Old Versions Folder

[Aimon Jardine]

Ihave eight years of design work and have always saved all (-1 setting) old versions of files. Yes, I am rethinking that decision now. Our IT guys have asked us to purge files not needed to loosen-up some server space. I would like to keep the latest three files in all of the old versions folders. We back up frequently; however, requesting a file to be restored can be a lengthy process.

Yes, Vault. If you have Inventor Pro, a basic version of Vault comes with it. I am a single user in my company as well and I am using Vault. I have it set up to backup three times per week to the network. All of the previous files "Old versions" are kept within the Vault so I can just delete the ones on the local.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but in my experience, if and when Inventor crashes, more often than not there'll be a copy of the file(s) I was working on in the "OldVersions" folder that can be opened and is usually where I was at time of crash, even if I hadn't saved in a while.

You might have misunderstood how it works. \OldVersions\ folder simply keeps a copy of of last saved file. It has nothing to do with crash or not. If Inventor crashes during save, you may get .newVer file in the same folder as the target file. Usually, .newVer is incomplete and it cannot be used.

@johnsonshiue I guess I did. I was always under the impression if Inventor crashed, one was able to pull the file out of the oldVersions folder and not lose any work...had a few people claim this over the years and I'm pretty sure I've seen such stated here as well.

I believe whoever claimed that ability did not know how Inventor works. There isn't an automatic backup running behind the scene. \OldVersions\ only keeps the last saved versions. Unsaved data is lost once Inventor aborts uncleanly. At Inventor App store, there are Add-Ins claiming the ability to save automatically. I have not used those. I am not endorsing any of those Add-Ins. The only thing I can say is that if it was technically easy, it should have been done in INV.

@johnsonshiue Oh I don't doubt that one bit. I personally never needed to use the process so I never actually verified such. I cannot recall the last time Inventor crashed on me...guess I'm not pushing it enough...lol

I am a new user. I run Pro 2016 on Windows 10 and 7. I am an Instructor at a local Junior College. I am trying to understand what the OLD VERSION folder actually holds. Some times when I check a students folder for files I also look in the OLD VERSION folder to see if the same files are in the old version folder. There are times when the list in the working folder and the list in the OLD VERSION folder is not the same. What can cause this? Is it because some students do there work at home and then bring in the files on a flash drive and then just copy to there working folder?

If a file become corrupt, or if you need to grab aprevious version because you make some mistake and you want o step back some steps, you can grab a part from old versions and start your work from previous versions.

example: Imagine you are creating a new part, and you save it one time. At this time, the old version folder is still empty. By the time you save second time, a part is created in that folder and represent the part as it where by the first save.... and so on..., when you save the third time, a parte is created (or substituted) with the second save.

Yes that is possible. Like @CCarreiras pointed out, the files in the oldversion location is solely based on when you save after your initial save. If the students are taking their work over after the first save and working on a different machine then the oldversion is not going to be the same.

I'm just wondering what's your concern is over the oldversion folder and why they are not the same? As many years I have been used Inventor I only need to access it when I have a corrupt file. I never compare its content with the working folder.

To add to this, when the status of an Inventor file changes in iProperties from to "Released" and run the "Purge" function from Windows Explorer it will delete all "Released" status items from the "Old Versions" folder.

Mark you are very close to the answer I am looking for, As I have stated before, I am an Instructor, and sorry to say even college students try to cheat once and awhile. We dont move our files and we dont do any releasing. I suspect that a certain student is copying other students work, therefore this is why I am asking about content, When I say content, I mean quantity is different. I am finding more files in the suspected students folder than in his OLD VERSION folder. The students can work at home also and bring their work to school. Once these new files have been added to their folder (via flash drive), what makes them get copied to the OLD VERSION folder. Or do they? Do they have to have something done to them like being printed ??

If a student creates a model and saves it while at college.. There's no file created in the oldversion folder. If this student takes this file and puts it on a thumb/usb drive and works on it away for college and saves it, there's a file created in the oldversion folder on their machine. When the student comes backs and copies over fromt the USB drive onto the school's computer, there is still no oldversion file created. IF the student then makes a change and saves it then a file is created in the oldversion folder.

There has been many posting about instructors trying to detemine if their students are cheating or not.. Here's a recent one. Review it and see if the solutions the users have offered will work in your case.

Old version are ONLY created when a file is edited AFTER creation... I would be more suspect of multiple old versions as that would mean they were opened and changed ( like changing iproperties, like say the Designer ).

Select an interval at which time the program will run a save command for either the current document, all visible documents or all open documents. These can then be saved to the document's original location or a custom location of your choice.

Choose how many versions you wish to retain or how long you wish to keep the saved versions. You can also choose whether or not the files get removed during a manual save in order to keep unused files to a minimum.

On restore, the program will treat the saved version similar to how Inventor treats files in the "Old Versions" folder. You can open the saved file as a read-only document, restore it to the current version, or open the document from which it was originally derived.

ZIP is an archive file format that supports lossless data compression. A ZIP file may contain one or more files or directories that may have been compressed. The ZIP file format permits a number of compression algorithms, though DEFLATE is the most common. This format was originally created in 1989 and was first implemented in PKWARE, Inc.'s PKZIP utility,[2] as a replacement for the previous ARC compression format by Thom Henderson. The ZIP format was then quickly supported by many software utilities other than PKZIP. Microsoft has included built-in ZIP support (under the name "compressed folders") in versions of Microsoft Windows since 1998 via the "Plus! 98" addon for Windows 98. Native support was added as of the year 2000 in Windows ME. [citation needed] Apple has included built-in ZIP support in Mac OS X 10.3 (via BOMArchiveHelper, now Archive Utility) and later. Most free operating systems have built in support for ZIP in similar manners to Windows and macOS.

ZIP files generally use the file extensions .mw-parser-output .monospacedfont-family:monospace,monospace.zip or .ZIP and the MIME media type application/zip.[1] ZIP is used as a base file format by many programs, usually under a different name. When navigating a file system via a user interface, graphical icons representing ZIP files often appear as a document or other object prominently featuring a zipper.

The .ZIP file format was designed by Phil Katz of PKWARE and Gary Conway of Infinity Design Concepts. The format was created after Systems Enhancement Associates (SEA) filed a lawsuit against PKWARE claiming that the latter's archiving products, named PKARC, were derivatives of SEA's ARC archiving system.[3] The name "zip" (meaning "move at high speed") was suggested by Katz's friend, Robert Mahoney.[4] They wanted to imply that their product would be faster than ARC and other compression formats of the time.[4] The earliest known version of .ZIP File Format Specification was first published as part of PKZIP 0.9 package under the file APPNOTE.TXT in 1989.[citation needed] By distributing the zip file format within APPNOTE.TXT, compatibility with the zip file format proliferated widely on the public Internet during the 1990s.[5]

The .ZIP File Format Specification has its own version number, which does not necessarily correspond to the version numbers for the PKZIP tool, especially with PKZIP 6 or later. At various times, PKWARE has added preliminary features that allow PKZIP products to extract archives using advanced features, but PKZIP products that create such archives are not made available until the next major release. Other companies or organizations support the PKWARE specifications at their own pace.

3a8082e126