When I plan to work on a file for awhile, like on animations and the like, I save each big change as a different filename, ex:
- enemyA_01.ase
- enemyA_02.ase
- enemyA_03.ase
- enemyA_04.ase
- enemyA_05.ase
- enemyA_06.ase
I’d love it if the Save As dialog had an increment button, in one program I used it was a + next to the filename input field. This button would look at the last few characters of my filename and increase the number by one. There might be an option next to it that indicates how many digits the number uses, like: 01 vs.006 vs. 0019
Alternatively, Maya has a much more extensive, but life-saving* Incremental Save Feature set: Save Scene Options | Maya 2016 | Autodesk Knowledge Network
*admittedly, Maya is well known for crashing, but when you’ve spent 40+ hours on a 3D file and it crashes corrupting your most recent save, it really saves stress when the increment save from an hour before the crash wasn’t corrupted.