An Auto Save Mel Script

[glipz]

My computer locks up every once in a while or the power surges. And I am not very good at saving often. I will get really into my project and not save for hours. Is there any way to write a script that saves my file to a temp file every 15 mins. I just want it to keep saving to the same file. (Disclaimer: I dont know anything about Mel Scripting. I am willing to learn, but you will have to go easy on me with explanations. Thanks)

Or if someone just has one they would like to share with me that would be nice too

Oh, I am running Maya 4 on WinXP if that helps.

Glen McKnight

[gmask]

Have you consider buying a UPS (uninterruptable power supply) for your computer? If your house has bad power and most do then you really need one and they aren't that expensive.. certainly not as expensive as replacing a fried computer or lost work.

[glipz]

Well I should have a UPS but that still dosent stop my computer from locking up, so I still need to find some kind of auto save.

Is there any tutorials on how to write mel scripts

i would think the program could just be some kind of loop that would be something like

function autosave;
count 900 seconds
save to c:temp.ma
;
run autosave again

I know that is nothing like it would look in code but it seems that it should be that simple

Any Help?

[gmask]

Well I should have a UPS but that still dosent stop my computer from locking up

Not to get sidetracked here but if you don't have a UPS how do you know that it wouldn't prevent your computer from locking up? Maybe your machine has some other problem?

Anyway the problem I have with using an autosave is that .. it would has to save incrementally which I allways do cause I may need to go back to an old versions. Maya 4 saves incrementsas and there is a MEL script for earlier versions that does this. Another problem is that sometimes my projects can take many minutes to save.. so I don't want to be interupted too aften and if you aren't saving your work several times per hour then you are asking for trouble.

I think you can write a MEL script that will run in the background but there may be some issues with doing this.. I think it woul dhave to be a script jop???

[scotta]

Have you tried the 'ajrAutoSave' script on this site? I haven't, but it looks like it might do what you need.