Shapr3D Pro Tip - The Undocumented Project File Backup

(Disclaimer - this is an undocumented feature and thus may not work forever)

Sorry to cross-post this. But I think the first thread was not the ideal spot since it relates to Hobby subscription. This is probably a lot more important to those who have a lot of drawings and really need to back them up. And it probably needs its own discussion rather than polluting the Announcements channel.

This was a pseudo live stream for how I back up my project files and how to re-import them. This method may not work forever but it is a nice safety net at the moment:

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Note for Windows users: I just started transferring large files using Dropbox. (If you need it please consider letting me or a friend refer/invite you to it, it gives us free version users get a little more storage each referral)

BTW :exclamation: I noticed Shapr (maybe it’s a Mac thing with all files) let’s you save file names with an emoticon in them. Odd, but true. However, for us Windows users these files are not readable by Windows.

I was naming a file named tools in the iPad Pro and noticed a toolbox emoticon in the keyboard so I hit that for giggles and low and behold it worked. I emailed the files to windows and it shows up in the email file, but once saved to the file system it is no longer there as far as I can tell.

Good catch, we will look into it :slight_smile:

I’ll have to look again in Windows. I’ll turn on the view ext in the file explorer. It might be there.

Hello! thanks for the report, could you please help me, which is the problematic emoji ?
(I tested it with a few emojis, these are visible in explorer/total commander and import works in Shapr3D windows beta too)

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@GaborK are those ASCII chars or are you trying Emoji? I think the issue is emoji

:exclamation:test.shapr|attachment (182.1 KB)

Thank you! I’m checking it.

I used simple emojis on an iPad, then I sent these file to a PC.
These are the same files:

Strange, your file is visible too.
Total commander / Explorer:

One more question is it ( :exclamation:test.shapr ) a valid .shapr file ? If it is, what’s your app version ?
Version info would be useful for us for a double check.

I may not be. I just renamed a file to for the emoji…

I was wrong. Windows can see them. I looked in the wrong place.

They are no in color on Windows Explorer but they are there. At least mine weren’t

This is a ok alternative but as you said its not related to the Hobby subscription as the Business subscription you can save in any format that Shapr3d currently has.

Having the Business subscription you wouldn’t need this type of weird way of backing up your files as you would normally do STEP file format or DWG if working in a day to day case. I would save it in a STEP file to a cloud or even Apples Cloud system if the file is well advanced and developed along the way.

My point was directed mainly at having the Hobby sub that its sort of a downer that theirs really no way to save your files manually. I could live exporting as a .shapr file format to have some way of saving my files as I desire and not trying to find tweaks thru other means. Even if you could find the files Hobby sub can’t import other than STL files at the moment.

I’m sure Shapr3d and the team behind it are trying to find a way to find a solution for this. They are hearing and watching our feedback which is always good thing to see.

Emoji are valid UTF characters, and should work anywhere you can type any other character… unfortunately, not all software is written in such a way that Unicode characters are supported. If any software in your chain does not support Unicode, this could lead to a problem, and may be why you saw an issue

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Good points and I absolutely agree with everything you say. I have the Business subscription but I still find it very useful. It is sort of like insurance. You hope you never need it but if you do you really need it.

The reason I use this method is I have a lot of drawings and I have more by the day. Many are works in progress and I’ve not gotten to the point where I need to export them to be made yet. With the method I demonstrated in the video I am able to “backup” all my drawings in a few seconds, just incase my iPad falls in a lake, gets broken, or lost. I now have the ability to restore my drawings to a new device.

But as you say this method is less than ideal. And I am very sure the folks at Shapr3D will get around to giving us a proper solution. I see this merely as a stop gap measure.

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