My Builds

Beginner

My Builds is Buildopia's on-device save system. It lets you keep multiple named builds in your browser, each with a thumbnail, so you can switch between projects and pick up where you left off. It also surfaces your last 30 autosaves so you can jump back to any earlier state of your current work. This guide covers both tabs.

Opening My Builds

My Builds is accessible from two places: the My Builds button in the top bar, and the My Builds item in the main menu (the hamburger button in the top-right corner). Either one opens the same panel. It has two tabs at the top — Saved Builds and Autosaves — and opens on whichever tab you last used.

Saved Builds Tab

The Saved Builds tab is where your manually named saves live. Each card shows a thumbnail of the build at the moment it was saved, its name, and the date and time it was saved. From here you can:

Load — replaces your current build with the saved one. A confirmation prompt appears first, so there's no risk of accidentally overwriting work in progress.
Rename — opens a prompt where you can type a new name for the save. The card updates immediately.
Delete — removes the save permanently after a confirmation prompt. This cannot be undone.

You can also click anywhere on a card (other than the buttons) to load it — same as pressing Load.

Searching Your Saves

A search bar at the top of the Saved Builds tab filters your saves by name as you type. Only cards whose names contain the search text are shown; the rest are hidden until you clear the query. A clear button (✕) appears inside the search field whenever a query is active — tap it to reset and show all saves. The empty-state message also updates to distinguish between two situations: no saves exist at all, or saves exist but none match the current search.

Tip: Search is case-insensitive and matches anywhere in the name — searching "house" will find "Beach House", "Haunted House Build", and "Greenhouse" alike.

Saving a Build

The Save Current Build button at the top of the Saved Builds tab captures a snapshot of your current build and adds it as a new card. When you click it, a prompt asks for a name — type anything you like, or leave it blank to default to "My Build". The snapshot includes your grid dimensions, every block placed, the Blueprint Reveal level, and a thumbnail taken from the current viewport.

Tip: Frame a good angle in the viewport before saving — the thumbnail is captured from your current camera position, so a clean perspective or a top-down shot makes it much easier to tell saves apart at a glance.

Save to My Builds & Clear

When you use the Clear button in the top bar, the confirmation dialog includes a Save to My Builds & Clear option. Choosing it saves your current build as a named slot in My Builds and then clears the grid in one action — so you never have to choose between saving and starting fresh. It opens the usual name prompt before proceeding, and the clear only happens after the save completes successfully.

Tip: This is the fastest way to archive a finished build and get a blank canvas without navigating to My Builds first, then returning to Clear.

Saves are stored in your browser's IndexedDB — on your device, never uploaded anywhere. There's no cap on the number of named saves you can create.

Autosaves Tab

The Autosaves tab shows the last 30 automatic snapshots Buildopia has taken of your work. A new autosave is written a few seconds after you stop editing, and again immediately when you switch away from the tab. The rolling window keeps the 30 most recent entries — once the cap is reached, the oldest is removed to make room for a new one.

Each autosave card is labelled Autosave #1 (the most recent) through Autosave #30 (the oldest), alongside the exact date and time it was taken. Two buttons appear on each card:

Button	What it does
Load	Replaces your current build with this autosave snapshot. Use this to jump back to an earlier state of your work.
Save to My Builds	Promotes this autosave into a permanent named save on the Saved Builds tab. A prompt asks for a name, and the save appears there immediately. The autosave itself is not removed — it stays in the rolling window until it's eventually pushed out by newer ones.

Tip: If you made a change you regret but can't undo far enough back, check the Autosaves tab. Because autosaves fire continuously as you build, there's a good chance a snapshot from before the change is still in the list.

The Startup Restore Prompt

When Buildopia finds a build saved in its legacy autosave slot (from a previous session before the My Builds system existed, or from the most recent session), it shows a prompt when the page loads:

Option	What happens
Load	Loads the autosaved build directly into the builder, exactly as it was.
Store	Moves the autosave into the Autosaves tab in My Builds and starts you with a fresh empty grid. The build isn't lost — it's accessible from the Autosaves tab whenever you need it.

If you choose Store, the build is written into the Autosaves rolling window. It will eventually be pushed out if 30 newer autosaves accumulate — if you want to keep it permanently, use Save to My Builds to give it a name.

How Saves Are Stored

Named saves and autosaves both live in your browser's IndexedDB, which means:

They don't follow you across devices. Saves on your laptop won't appear on your phone, and vice versa. Each browser has its own separate My Builds database.
They don't survive browser data clearing. Clearing your browsing data, site data, or using a browser reset will wipe everything in My Builds, including all named saves and autosaves. Export any build you care about as a .json file before doing this.
They don't work across different browsers. Saves created in Chrome won't be visible in Firefox or Safari, even on the same device.
Private browsing may not work. Many browsers block or restrict IndexedDB in private/incognito windows. In these sessions, My Builds may not function at all. If you're building in a private window, rely on Export to save your work.

Bottom line: My Builds is fast and convenient for day-to-day work, but it is not a permanent archive. For anything you want to keep long-term — your best builds, builds you're sharing, works in progress on other devices — always use Export to save a .json file. See the Importing & Exporting guide for details.

My Builds vs. Export

The two systems complement each other rather than replacing one another. My Builds is the fastest way to switch between multiple projects or revisit an earlier state of a build — everything stays in the browser and loading is instant. Export produces a .json file you can move between devices, share with others, or store as a long-term backup that's immune to browser resets and data clearing. A good workflow is to use My Builds as your working scratch space and export at any significant milestone you'd want to preserve.

My Builds vs. Autosave

The automatic autosave that has always run in the background still works the same way — it writes continuously as you edit and ensures a crash or accidental tab close won't lose recent work. The Autosaves tab in My Builds surfaces that same rolling history in a browsable form, so instead of just getting one snapshot back on next load, you can scroll back through the last 30 and pick the exact point you want to return to.

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