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The Anchorage, Part 3

Satira Capriccio

Renowned
CV-BEE
Contributing Artist
Having to constantly change the paths irritated me to no end, which is why I stopped using DIM. Not only do I rearrange everything in my runtimes, I store zips in folders categorized by year and order no. Which meant I had to change the download path for every single order.

DIM allows you to set paths up to where you want to put things but if you want to rearrange them into separate runtimes you would need to change the installation paths each time.

I've decided I'll stick with categories but I may slowly begin to reinstall on a new drive which will give me access to the old content directory as well.
 

Pendraia

Sage
Contributing Artist
lol...you're way more organised than I am Satira.

I'm doing a happy dance at the moment...I just picked up Arki's tutorial on rigging complicated items in DS I've had my eye on it for a while but it was finally reduced from $109 to $69. It went in my trolley so fast I broke the sound barrier...:bounce::snoopydance::snoopydances:
 

Miss B

Drawing Life 1 Pixel at a Time
CV-BEE
I'm not quite that bad. I store my zips by store, and I add the vendor's name at the front, so they're alphabetical by vendor. I usually remember who created what product, and "usually" I remember what store I purchased it at, so that seems to work just fine for me.

I have spreadsheets for each store with all my purchases with their sku, order no. and purchase date. They're listed from top to bottom by most current purchase first, so scanning the purchase date column usually makes it easy to find what I'm looking for.
 

Pendraia

Sage
Contributing Artist
Yep...very cool! I'm downloading it now.

I store Daz zips separate to the others but then I have another folder which I call Downloads and then split it into 2D, 3D and Tutorials. Then under 3D I have by the site so if it was from Hivewire it's in that folder and than organised by type. E.g Animals/Horse
Hivewire Characters/Dawn/Clothing etc.,
I don't do spreadsheets or anything and this conversation is reminding me I'm overdue to back everything up. I also have a separate folder for Zbrush downloads and other programs.
 

Satira Capriccio

Renowned
CV-BEE
Contributing Artist
Well yes. I also store zips by store. So it's Store / Year / Order No.

My purchases spreadsheet has each store on a separate tab, and then Product, SKU, Order Date, Order No, Cost, Discounts/Coupons, (in the case of HiveWire, Points Used & Points Earned), Regular Price, Discount Percent. I also total the order and calculate the discount percent for the order.

I enter newest products below the previous order since it's easy to sort by product or reverse date. Oh yeah. I should mention the first column is the row number ... which is why it's so easy to sort by any column and then quickly return to the original row order. I do that with all spreadsheets since most spreadsheets I work with (either personal or work) require multiple types of sorting.
 

Terre

Renowned
Spreadsheets are something I need to learn.
Got most of my work stuff that isn't in filing cabinets boxed up in milk boxes today. I'll get the rest of what needs boxing done just before I leave work tomorrow so it's out of the way for the computer changeout. The boss says not to worry about the cabinets. They'll just move them if they need to.
Yay! Almost time for a much more flexible program! The boss says I'll be able to look at info such as a product's movement on my handheld instead of having to walk all of the way back to the computer if I need to find out that info! Yay! That would have saved me about 10 minutes of time just a few days ago.
 

Pendraia

Sage
Contributing Artist
That's a lot of work ladies...how do you find a specific item that way? I know that I store by type because that's how I would look for it.

I did spreadsheet courses when I worked at a Uni helping adminster a teaching course. It's very useful stuff to know.

Glad to hear that the new system will save time Terre!
 

Miss B

Drawing Life 1 Pixel at a Time
CV-BEE
My purchases spreadsheet has each store on a separate tab, and then Product, SKU, Order Date, Order No, Cost, Discounts/Coupons, (in the case of HiveWire, Points Used & Points Earned), Regular Price, Discount Percent. I also total the order and calculate the discount percent for the order.
Oh your spreadsheets hold a lot more info than mine do. I do have one spreadsheet where I have what I spend at each store, and that one has a different tab for each store, and I have a page at the front which I set up show me the total amounts for each store so I can see at a glance what I've spent over the years. Not sure that's a good thing, or a bad thing, but I started it years ago, and I just keeping adding to it without even thinking about it.

I learned spreadsheets with Lotus 123 back on my old DOS-based computer, and Excel is pretty much the same thing, except it uses VBasic for scripting. Hmmmm, I thought I was anal about keeping spreadsheets. Glad to see, I'm not that bad. ;)
 

Pendraia

Sage
Contributing Artist
lol...I don't think I want to know how much I've spent over the years. I have 6000+ items just at Daz. I shudder to think what I have bought if I add it all up.
 

Satira Capriccio

Renowned
CV-BEE
Contributing Artist
Yeah. I was shocked when I totalled up all I'd spent at DAZ. Was more than enough to buy a full size Prius.

I originally had a column in my spreadsheets that specified the type of product ... Figure (characters/clothing related), Architectural (buildings, vehicles, furniture), and Nature (landscapes, plants, weather). I had also categorized the zips by Year, Type (Figure, Architectural, Nature), and then Order No. I generally have an inkling on a product name, which then gets me to the product in my spreadsheet. From there, it's easy to find the zip since the Purchase Date and Order No are right there.

I also separate products in my runtimes by type. For example, if it's an architectural building, I use folders named Bridge and Pier, Castle and Keep, Courtyard, Crypt and Graveyard, Futuristic, Garden and Bower, Interior, Pavilion, Ruins, Steeple and Tower, Temple, Town and Country (which is along the lines of villages and city type products). If I don't know a name, I generally remember whether it's a castle or a crypt or a garden structure (like Fantasy Gazebo) ... and so on. That will get me to the product name, which then takes me back to the spreadsheet to see where the zip is located.

It does get to be a pain keeping the spreadsheet updated though. Even if it's mostly copy and paste from the order.
 

Pendraia

Sage
Contributing Artist
I do something similar using the categories.
For props it would be Environments - Exterior -Landscapes -Forests etc...
 

Lorraine

The Wicked Witch of the North
Hey dere!

My content is organised by categories manually. I manually download everything, install to an installation folder then cut and paste into where I want things to go. My zips are all shoved in one big folder called Daz Zips. I use a search engine called 'Everything' which I cannot recommend highly enough. Free, works on the fly (you see things move in real time without having to rebuild) and is FAST. You can designate which folders or drives you want searched and remove folders you don't. Like, I don't need to have the data folder in DS return results. Like I say, can't recommend it enough, it's a lifesaver for me.

And good luck with your reinstallation, Pen. I did it a few years back and just this week finished moving some poses and mats to their proper places. I'd got tired and forgot I hadn't finished ;)
 

quietrob

Extraordinary
Hey dere!

My content is organised by categories manually. I manually download everything, install to an installation folder then cut and paste into where I want things to go. My zips are all shoved in one big folder called Daz Zips. I use a search engine called 'Everything' which I cannot recommend highly enough. Free, works on the fly (you see things move in real time without having to rebuild) and is FAST. You can designate which folders or drives you want searched and remove folders you don't. Like, I don't need to have the data folder in DS return results. Like I say, can't recommend it enough, it's a lifesaver for me.

And good luck with your reinstallation, Pen. I did it a few years back and just this week finished moving some poses and mats to their proper places. I'd got tired and forgot I hadn't finished ;)
First off. Points to @Pendraia for using the term "Bugbear". I use bugaboo but I think the meanings are the same. More importantly, the Aliens monitoring this thread from Outer Space, are going crazy trying to figure out what both terms mean.

I store all my zips by month, I rename all of my readme's and threw them into one big folder. Categories for me are broken down into clothing for any particular character and then by vendor within the folders, Characters I dialed in or modified are in another folder then all of my V4 A3 Characters are in another folder. After that monsters, animals and original figures such as Naru or Hatu from chocolate are in a different master folder. Hair Cr2 are also gathered into one place. Poses are broken down by figure and purpose. For instance my drinking coffee and Texting poses are in different master folders and again separated by character. Props are still being figured out. Materials too.

I use Ultra Search by Jamsoft. That thing just works. One more thing as Columbo says (Who doesn't like Columbo?) I also have a nice little hack called Take Ownership. I've changed computers and that means a different owner for certain files on old hard drives. When I go to copy a file to my newer bigger, harder drive and it says I need to be the owner of the file (despite being the administrator ) and it won't let me copy the file, One click and I take ownership of all files in any given folder including subfolders. That was a big help getting my runtime rebuilt.
 

Dreamer

Dream Weaver Designs
I need to redo my runtime too, just really not looking forward to that as about the only things in default location are textures and geometrys oh and anything else the would bust a file path by moving. All the rest is moved about to where it make sense to me. Plus being Poser it can get a tad cranky about where some things should be lol.
As to my zips, sorted first by store then by what they are ie hair, clothing, characters etc slightly chaotic but I can mostly find what I am looking for lol
 

Pendraia

Sage
Contributing Artist
I recently read an article about how colourful Australia english is...I hadn't thought about using the term bugbear it just fitted. Wrapping your head around other aussie slang would probably do your head in.

Thanks for the tip on the app called Take Ownership...that can drive you to drink when it does that and it doesn't seem to follow any patterns it just does when it's likely to annoy me the most.

I've decided I need to be more organised generally...
 
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