Transferring Categories to New Computer

MarkIsSleepy

Greetings all,

I just got a new computer (hurray). I installed DS to it and copied over all of my content from my old PC and can see it all just fine in the new PC's content library - but here's my problem...

I have thousands of items I have added to that library and last year I spent about four days assigning it all to categories that made sense to me so I could rapidly find what I needed. None of those new categories appear on my new computer - if I look by category absolutely everything is listed under Unassigned.

Is there a way to transfer all those categories I created and assigned from my old computer? I'm on a PC and using DS4.5 if that makes a difference.

Any help would be appreciated - I would really prefer not to have to spend three or four days of my vacation painstakingly categorizing everything again!

Thank you.

JimmyC_2009

There is a post by AdamR001 describing just that, here : http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/5639/

If you need any more help, please post again.

adamr001

There's actually another way to do it now that's probably a bit easier. You can do a metadata dump/reload. In that methodology the relative paths of the content between computers doesn't matter so long as you have copied everything over correctly.

Here's the basics of that methodology.

Inside DS, with the CMS running and categories visible (on the Content Library pane):
1) OLDCOMP: Click on the Context Menu at the top of the Content Library pane Tab.
2) OLDCOMP: Select "Content DB Maintenance"
3) OLDCOMP: Ensure that ONLY "Export User Data" is checked.
4) OLDCOMP: Click Accept.
5) OLDCOMP: Wait. (This could be a VERY long way, depending on the size of your database. It takes my computer about 3 hours to dump my entire database. Do not be alarmed if DAZ Studio apparently begins to "Fail to Respond" just ignore this and continue to wait.)
6) OLDCOMP: Once it's done, look in your first defined DAZ Studio format directory under "Runtime/Support/" (check your directory mappings if you don't know which one this is)
7) OLDCOMP: You should find one or more files that are named like "UserData_X.dsx" where "X" is some number.
8) OLDCOMP: Copy THESE files to your first named DAZ Studio format directory (again to the Runtime/Support sub-folder) on the NEW computer (after all your content directories are copied).

Now switch to the New Computer.
1) NEWCOMP: Make certain you're on the Content Library tab.
2) NEWCOMP: Click the Context Menu at the top of the Content Library Tab.
3) NEWCOMP: Select "Content DB Maintenance"
4) NEWCOMP: Check "Re-Import Metadata" (and only this)
5) NEWCOMP: Click Accept and WAIT. Again, this could take a very long time.
6) NEWCOMP: Done!

Mortze

Worked like a charm! Thank you!