Saving and Loading Your .blend File
Now you’re at a good point to save your file. Rendering can take some time and something can go wrong in the meantime (power failures, software crashes, etc.) that could cause you to lose your work. That’s why it’s recommended that you save your file often.
You can save your file by pressing Ctrl + S. If you’re saving it for the first time, Blender will display a menu where you can select the location where you want to store your file and how you want to name it. If you’ve saved the file previously, Ctrl + S will overwrite that previous version. If you press Shift + Ctrl + S, Blender will display the Save menu again so you can select Save As.... This allows you to create a new copy of the file with a different name.
To open a file, press Ctrl + O and Blender will show you the folder navigation menu where you can look for the .blend file you want to open. In the File menu, you can also access the Open Recent... option, which shows you a list of the latest files you’ve worked on so you can quickly open them. Of course, you don’t need to use those shortcuts if you don’t remember them; you can always access the Save and Load options from the File menu.
Tip
There’s a little trick for saving different versions of a file really fast. Sometimes, you want to save your progress in a new file, so you can end up with different files from different parts of the process, allowing you to go back to a previous version if necessary.
Go to the Save As... menu (or press Shift + Ctrl + S) and press the NumPad + key: Blender will automatically add a number to the filename. If the filename is already numbered, Blender will add 1 to it.