Restoring backups using the Time Machine

Description

In this tutorial you'll learn how to restore backups of your SkyCAD files using the Time Machine, in case a rare, unfortunate event happens to one of your files.

Topics Covered

Backup, back-up, restore, time machine, corrupt, doesn't open, broken

Main Content

SkyCAD has a built-in, automatic, backup process that saves backups of each SkyCAD file that you modify and save. 
These backups are stored in the Time Machine. 
A backup file will automatically be created if a file (project, symbol, catalogue part, etc.) is saved or autosaved, at least 10 minutes after the previous time the file was saved.

To access your Time Machine, select SkyCAD in the tree view, go to the Home tab and select Restore file from Time Machine (simply called Time Machine in V1.3.25 and higher).

A window will pop up displaying all the backups in the Time Machine.

The most common types of SkyCAD files you can find in your Time Machine are projects, catalogue parts, symbols, libraries and even the Environment Structure file (the main file that SkyCAD needs to start up).
The Environment Structure file also contains most of your settings for classes, numbering formats, etc.
It's important to understand that these files are not the most recent versions of these files.
They are essentially copies of previous saves applied to these files.
By default, the list is sorted from oldest to newest, so your most recent backups will be at the bottom of the list, as indicated by the Last update column.

To restore a file to one of its backups (try the most recent backup first), select the backup in the Time Machine and click OK.
SkyCAD will ask if you're sure, then SkyCAD will restart to properly restore the backup.

Note: once you restore to a backup of a file, the most recent version of that file (the one you were using before restoring to a backup) will be lost, which shouldn't be a problem due to the fact that you are trying to restore a backup of that file, probably because something is wrong with the most recent version of the file.
However, if you'd like to keep a copy of the most recent file for some reason, you could make a manual copy of that file via your Windows File Explorer.

Once SkyCAD has restarted and your file has been restored to one of its backups, you may have to re-do some work to get the file back to the state it was before you restored to a backup, but at least everything was not lost.
If restoring your most recent backup didn't work, then try the next most recent, and so on.

To prevent your SkyCAD environment from swelling to an unacceptable size, the Time Machine has a built-in deleting process that automatically deletes backups that are older than 5 days.