There are some general notes/tips on sequential refinements on the wiki: https://topas.awh.durham.ac.uk/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=evans_ln2.pdf. It has a list of 15 do's and don'ts.
If I'm fitting a series of patterns I always like to have an INP file configured so that it will converge for any pattern in the set from any starting point. I try to avoid treating individual patterns differently as then the model changes across the series (others will disagree with this approach). If you really need to do this you can (e.g.) use #prm's to define conditional statements. It's outlineded on the wiki - search for the word "hash".
If you switch to topas-editor from jEdit then backups are done automatically for you. Or you can specifically archive files for a permanent record (ctrl-ta). There are also one click commands for automatically outputting all important parameters and autoplotting python routines you can use.
As Matthew said, local parameters let you report or output things. For example for cell volume or weight percent in a str you could do:
local vol_of_this_str = Get(cell_volume);:0
local wgtperc_of_this_str = Get(weight_percent);:100`
The reason why there isn't more in the videos is to try and keep them as short as possible and to cover the most common things. They take quite a long time to record and all the topas community things (jEdit, topas-editor, wiki, forum, tutorials, YouTube) are done in my spare time. I also have to comandeer a spare bedroom to record them, so they only happen if I'm home alone 🙂.
