how can i get .dgn backup file?

Hi,

saiprasad l said:

how can i get backup file?

MicroStation does not creates backup files automatically, so when you did not create the backup in some other way (using MicroStation key-in manually, configuring an application or macro, or using external backup software), the backup does not exist.

saiprasad l said:

that is my dgn file was suddenly closed.

What does it mean? Does MicroStation crashed or was it Windows or HW issue? Despite of it probably will not help with backup file, it's always important to analyze why it happened to be able to decrease a probability it will happen again.

You did not provide any information what MicroStation version do you use, whether it was DGN V7 or V8, what Windows version is used, whether MicroStation created an exception log or not etc. (please see best practices), so no further investigation can be done.

saiprasad l said:

then again open that dgn file some data was missing

It's quite rare situation, because MicroStation saves changed to DGN file immediately (technically in a few seconds transactions), so typically the file is corrupted as the whole or it's fine and fully readable. But maybe you use different MicroStation configuration (e.g. changes are not saved immediately)?

With regards,

  Jan

If file is suddenly closed then some of the last elements in file could be corrupted so they doesn't show up.

As Jan has mentioned, MicroStation does not automatically create backup files of your DGN files. You might like to have a look at the following Wiki article that helps to explain methods for automating a process but you could just use the keyin BACKUP which creates a copy at the time it is entered.

https://communities.bentley.com/products/microstation/w/microstation__wiki/19488/automatic-backup-of-design-dgn-files

We have also found that a 3rd party MDL created by this German user can be quite useful for automatic backups.

See download.zip from this site in Germany: http://www.t-haberstroh.de/downloads.html It appear to also work for V8i versions ok. The documentation (and some variables are in German, but I think they are quite straight forward.

As the copyrights of these tools are not from Bentley I cannot upload it for you but you may download it here:

http://www.t-haberstroh.de/backup_V8.ma

There are currently 3 Variables that control the behavior of this thing:

MS_BACKUP (yes the same as Ustn) might be used to define the path where the backup is stored (otherwise smae dir as dgn is used). Normally the file is saved as <dgnname>.bak and overwritten with each backup, but if you set a variable BACKUPMODUS to 1, the file is saved as <dgnname>_date_time.dgn for each backup. The time between backups might be controlled with a variable BACKUPZEIT (its a German developer :-) ) and might be between 5 and ~ minutes (long enough to happen after the lifetime of the computer.

Andrew, this is exactly how I was using this years ago. I have a quick question.

The backup.ma you are talking about from the developer is downloadable in the first html link, called, backup.ma, but you also show a site in the next link that references the actual ma code. Do I need both of those? I put the backup.ma in the appropriate folder and loaded it. I also put in the variables you mentioned. I'm using Microstation v8i SS10, but I have a feeling I don't have the correct .ma file. How would I use this:  http://www.t-haberstroh.de/backup_V8.ma

I'm not sure how I would copy this code into a .ma file???

The suggestion to use this method of backup from this 3rd party developer is not supported by Bentley. You should be contacting them if you have any questions for how their tool works. As the instructions they provide are in German this may be difficult if you do not understand this language. You might like to use Google Translate if you have any issues.