Beyond this lesson.

This lesson has provided the basic skills you'll need to continue with the rest of lessons in this guide. There is much more to learn about the user interface, hotkeys, including features that speed up your workflow, extra modifications, performed with or key held while applying tools or while performing other operations.

Before continue with next lesson, I recommend to adjust ZModeler settings to fit your needs. First of all, note that ZModeler was written and maintained by the only person and this software quite complex to be bug-free and stabile, So, I strongly recommend to adjust Autosave feature. Pick in main menu Options\Settings.... Select General in the left tree-box of configuration dialog and then expand Files...\.Z3D Open/Save in right configuration panel.

z3d is an extension of native zmodeler 3D files. These files store whole scene information and when saving your project, consider that .z3d files are the best choice.

There are several options you should adjust in this configuration panel.

Save Thumbnail - will store small scene image in .z3d file so you can preview it before opening or overwriting certain file.

Use Compression - will enable ZIP compression of .z3d files if you are going to share files on internet. Compressed files do not require external packing (zip or rar) since it will result in very poor or zero compression level.

Create multiple backups - will force ZModeler to create multiple autosave files (when this option not set, only one backup file is used and it is overwritten each time zmodeler performs autosave).

Time spent on file - This option allows zmodeler to keep track on how much time have you spent on certain file. This can be useful when you post your works on websites and would like to write how many hours (or days) have been spent on modelling.

Associate .z3d with ZModeler2 - By setting this option, ZModeler will create an association between ZModeler2 and .z3d files. When this option set, you can double-click on .z3d files in windows explorer and these files will be opened in ZModeler.

Drag&Drop files - You can drag and drop .z3d file into ZModeler window. This option sets ZModeler behaviour in such a case. It can be either Merge file (file content will be added to current scene) or Open file (file content will completely replace current scene).

Autosave Mode - autosave feature behaviour. The default selection would fit your needs - it will create backup .z3d files inside ZModeler's Autosave folder. So, if a crash has occured and you haven't saved your scene recently, you can locate your file in ZModeler\Autosave folder - there could be either one or several (if multyple backups enabled) "filename_autosave.z3d" files. "Filename" is the name of file you have been working on, or "untitled" if you have't saved the scene yet. If there are several backups (e.g. untitled_autosave1.z3d, untitled_autosave2.z3d and untitled_autosave3.z3d), open the newest file (according to file's time and date).

Autosave interval (minutes) - is an interval (in minutes) between auosave operations.

Recent Files - is an amount of recently opened files zmodeler will show in File\Recent menu.

Be adviced that ZModeler creates a backup copy of each file it overwrites. The backup copy has a .bak extension. If you want to revert to the file you have incidentally overwritten, you can rename ".bak" file and open it.
These backups are created when exporting too, so, if you have exported and going to release your modelled scene/file, make sure not to include any ".bak" files with it, since this is just a backup copy of the scene or other files.