Categorys gone? Organizing?

Muffin64

I went through all the trouble manually going through every folder categorizing everything manually.
Sadly suddenly all my categorys are gone and only the default folder is left.
Where does DAZ save the self set categories?
How can I restore them?

[It might have to do with the Install Manager as this weekend I wanted to install a new product but the rar-file download didn't work, so  installed the DIM trying to install this way.]

The question can be read everywhere, but is there by now an effective way to organize content?
It always happens to me that accidently I'll discover "new"content for my producst by accidently stumbling over it. Just recently I found that the Troll can be a Lavatroll too.
It is sad that content simply gets lost cause you never knew it exsted and hence it's full power can't be used.
I'm also a little tired of waisting precious time by scrolling through folders.

Richard Haseltine

The categorisation is stored in the database. If it has been replaced and you don't have a backup (by default, for Windows, it's in the AppData folder in your profile - %AppData%/daz 3d/cms/contentcluster/). Were you using a non-default location for the database? Do you have the imported metadata for your products, or did you use only custom categories?

You can, if you recover or redo your categories, export them - from the Content Library option menu (the lined button in the top corner, or right-click the tab) select Content DB Maintenance and then check the Export Userdata option. This will place one or more userdata#.dsx files in the /Runtime/Support/ folder of your first Daz Studuo Format Content Directory, you can later reimport metadata using the same dialogue.

Muffin64

It appears I might have somehow overwritten it.
I created own categories where I roughly mapped everything with sub categories. Like a bit toolbox.
While searching a solution I realized a few things.

- distinguishment between "old" and "new" DAZcontent, usually old Content is not properly listed
- Suppliers create their Artistnamefolders and not naming things properly (please note, sellig 3D assets is not really supposed to be an individual Artwork, they will be used as part of an creation)
- to many sub folders as example Animals can be in
"Animals" "figures->animals" or "DAZ Animals"
- Content gets lost, by being not listed anywhere, wasting the full potential of the product and eating disc space
- by intend of selling more and preventing copyrighttheft things are purposely keept a little unhandy (which has the opposite effect)
- usually content from external sites works easyer
- new solutions for content management make things just more confusing/breakable

I need to reconsider how to use DAZ. It is supposed to be a powerfull tool but it's complicated, timeconsuming usage makes me consider that it can be used as a base for something only rather than a creativestudio-software.

I wonder if a "one-folder-structure" would be realizable. All files for one thing would be stored in one Folder which could be moved freely arround within the My DAZ library folder. Which would make it possible to set an easy, own folderstructure within the explorer.
Objects consisting of more things would have sub folders for each.
Older Objects could be manually reduced to one Folder before pasting them in the libary.

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