configs gone

Please check if this is your case:
https://www.beamng.com/threads/now-beamng-changes-my-folder-paths-why.62055/#post-1018150

 

Documents/BeamNG.drive/vehicles contains your custom configurations.

If the paths did not change, and you don't see your custom configurations .PC files if you navigate there, something must have deleted those.
The game cannot do that as it does not have that functionality, nor Steam will ever touch that folder.

 

My Computer > Double click on 'Local Disk (C' > You should see a 'beamng.drive_userpath' folder then.

If you don't have that folder, then your issue is different from the one in the link above, and is probably instead the second part of my post above.

 

Again, the game literally does not have a function to delete those .PC files. Neither Steam can do that.
If you don't see them in your userfolder, something else may have removed them.

Did you search your PC for '<configurationName>.pc' to see if they are somewhere else?

 

That's normal behavior.
Clear cache will only preserve your custom configuration (.pc files) in the vehicles folder.
Anything else will be moved to the backup folder (nothing gets deleted).

If you have Jbeam files in that folder, it means you are developing a mod.
You should be careful about when to press that button then.

 

Looks like you pressed the 'Clear Cache' button in the launcher.
It moves all 'cache' files in the backup folder.

Simply pick the 'vehicles' folder and place it in your userfolder (Documents/BeamNG.drive)

 

Clear Cache does more than its name, simply to keep it simple for non tech-savy users.
It does:

• Scan your userfolder (except: mods, levels, trackEditor, screenshots, replays, settings, .pc files)*
• Remove the cache.xxxx folders and materials files
• Any other file that does not match the above should be moved to the backup folder

0.18 does create a backup folder (unknown_files_user_backup) except it does not seem to move the 'other' files in there. We will check, thanks for the report.

 

Yes, it's not meant to backup the cache.xxxx folders, but it should be backing up the files which are not supposed to be where it finds them.