DACS 1.7

DACS is the acronym for “D3v Anti Crash Saver” and is a little utility I wrote on 23th December 2005 (I always have a log inside my project folders ;)) and that prevents the common damage of scenes, caused by a crash of Autodesk 3ds Max.
Who uses this 3D package for knows for sure how frustrating it is to re-work on a scene because a crash deleted it. In fact, while 3ds Max crashes, the scene is damaged and the file will contain a little chunk of the entire work; this happens about 1 time on 10 crashes.
After this, when you try to reopen your file, 3ds Max says that it is corrupted and the data are completely lost.

There are 3 solutions to this problem:
– Do a frequent backup of your folder and files
– Increment your scene version with a progressive number
– Use my DACS 😉

The utility consists on a simple script of 3 Kb and it is loaded in the common way from the MAXScript menu. You can use the StartupScript folder too. In the previous image you can see how it appears when loaded.
As you can see, it automatically finds the file name and the path of your project. This script was written before that Autodesk introduces the new folder structure, similar to the one adopted in the old versions of  Maya. This means that DACS saves the files in the same folder of the project (this is yet in my TODO list).

At this point you can start working safely: my script will inform you about the time from the latest save and when you press the button “Save Files” it will save your file plus two additional files, completely identical.
If your system crashes or the light goes away or the operative system gets stuck, DACS will maintain the integrity of the scenes, at least one of them 😉

Many thanks to Giorgia Foresta that spent time correcting my terrible english!