Anybody else use the store as a quick librarian archive?
Griffin Avid
Posts: 3,758
in The Commons
Sometimes, when I'm looking for the best product in my library, I'll search the store and see what I already own.
I find myself doing a lot of store searches.
Crazy how often you come across something you don't recognize and think "Oh my, I have to remember to use that!"
Other times- there's stuff in the cart and I'll search and discover I already have a product that fills that role.
But yeah, I do use the Store's search field several times a day. lol
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Yeah, I do that, too, all the time. It's very easy to filter by category, so if I'm looking for a building that I already own, for example, I can easily find what I'm looking for. Same for any other category, really.
I frequently use it as if i cant find somthing in DAZ as the inbuilt search function seems all but usless. Maybe i'm doing somthing wrong.
it is always handy because if you don't have it your cart awaits
I only list the ones I have to avoid this distraction. :D
How's that working out for you? :D
All the time, using Ati's "purchased" script (what ever it's proper name is)
If only DAZ would leave the shop pages of pulled products up for those that have bought them (bit of an ask).
When searching for stuff that I know I already have, it's working perfectly. Buying stuff is a totally separate activity. :D
I'm building a file right now with name, image, order date, sku number, etc. of everything I own from the Daz store. Gonna take awhile. LOL I exported from IM as a csv and opened it in Libre Office Calc.
Laurie
Product library here at the website and a desktop shortcut to the Windows Explorer folder for my content is how I find stuff I haven't categorized or can't quite remember the name of.
Yes... I find the search of studio to be fairly useless and quite slow. It’s faster to search the store although you run into the same issue as Studio with props not being properly labeled.
It would be nice if they had a search function to complement the "Hide Items I own" to "Only Show Items I Own."
Going one step further it would be superlative if they then had an easily downloadable page with the product info and promos or a way for us to archive our owned products in a searchable pamphlet or book we could print out.
I use the products library in the profile sometimes - wish it would be more extensive in terms of search options.
This would be wonderful.
If you use the Daz Deals browser addon it does this. I could not live without it now lol. Makes shopping for only items i own or only wishlisted items really handy. I really recommended it, I actually had forgotten about it until a few months ago after re-building my pc lol.
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/106296/announcing-daz-deals-browser-add-on/p1
I use a software called Inspiration Library, it works great. You can create categories for your projects, and fill them of promo images or webpages of Daz with a custom title of the product and a description text.http://www.beenokle.com/inspiration-library.html
I like to categorize all my purchased things from my product library, but also is useful to store wishlist for future purchases reminding me for what I want that.
You could create a whole category for your render ideas and fill them with possible products you have or you need. Nothing can't beat that usefullness.
. .
I just go to my Wishlist and scroll through it, but it's only 3 pages long. And Product Library, though it does need better search options.
Also l rewiishlist products after purchasing them. So can use one or other of the wishlistify scripts and uncheck hide owned to generate lists of what I have and what I've thought looks useful within categories.
Not always useful, exept when it is.
Which search - Content Library or Smart Content?
What I would find could is if the DAZ Shopping plugin created offline webpages as they look on the DAZ Website local to our computer of our 'Product Library' in the DAZ Store on our My Account page for searching.
Alternatively it would be nice if the search funtion in DAZ 3D allowed the searcher to restrict the search to just the Products section tab of the content of the DS UI and also added a new section that was organized by DAZ Store Order #, similar to the DAZ Store My Account section 'Product Library'.
Smart Content can only operate on items which have those tags that make it appear in Smart Content.
Well the Internal Daz product sorter (Smart Content) categories that are missing is .....
1) a true Favorites (that works with a simple right-click (add to Favorites))
2) Sort by Used Recently
3) Loaded in scene or (currently using)
Content library. I don't use smart content.
You know when you buy a set which contains all those little scene extras. You know for example you have a broom, but it may not be called that broom? Sometimes it is faster to check the website for broom, than to search library for the prop.
Could you post an example of this in the addon's thread? https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/106296/announcing-daz-deals-browser-add-on
That's the best place to keep suggestions, because in other threads they will just get lost. Thanks. This is something that could be done, but some clarification would be nice as to what exactly you would find useful.
I wish there was one perfect option. As it is, I use a combination of the Store with the DAZ Deals Browser, Taosoft's DAZ Account Manager, the DAZ store's product library, DIM, and Google, as each one has one has advantages and disadvantages.
The DAZ Deals Browser is generally the most useful when trying to find a specific type of product that I already own, as it's the only one that allows a more targeted search by category... just set the store to show a specific sub category, set of figures, artists, etc, then check the "Only Show Owned" option. It even works with doing word search using the store's search funtion, though that brings you back to the limits of the store's own poor search function. And the Browser adds a lot of additional functionality to the your store Product library page. It's weak links, however, are that it is restricted by the limits of the store's own search parameters, and searches won't display products that are no longer in the store, products that used to be sold separately but is no available only as part of a bundle, or that have been improperly classified. Also, if you have a large collection, it can be a pain to have to scroll through multiple pages of results... for example, with the store narrowed down to display only Genesis 3 Female products, I have to go through 14 pages of 60 items each... but that's still an order of magnitude better than having to dig through the 59 pages containing all 3510 G3F Products currently available in the store. And needless to say, the browsers major weakness is that if the Store is down or your internet is out, this option goes out the window.
Fortunately, Taosoft's Account Manager covers many of the DS Browser's weaknesses and has it's own strengths. In format it's essentially souped up version of the DAZ Store's own product library, but with a lot of the features you wish the store had. And since it pulls from that data, it shares the Product LIbrary's weakness of only being able to search for a keyword in the product name rather than by category. So, if you search for "Hair" it will show you anything that has Hair in product name... including Chair... but won't display a product that doesn't actually have hair in the name. Needless to say, there are quite a few of these and even dong multiple searchs using alternate words like Brows, Braids, Pony Tail and Beard won't catch all of them, as there are a good number of products in the store that include a hair item as part of the set but don't mention it at all in the name. On the positive side, it does list EVERYTHING that's in your store product library, and you can sort by the date you bought it, the day it was entered in the store, the sku number and whether or not it's available via DIM. Better yet, it displays the product's DAZ store page when you highlight each item, and you can save your history and the accompanying product data (including images, if they're still in the store) to a separate file and access them when you're offline, and you can also output the current database as a .csv file that opens in Excel. The one thing that is a nuisance, however, is that the software is that you periodically have to upload new versions of the software in order to keep accessing even your old file, and there have been several occasions where the manager has been locked up for several days to a weak when the new update isn't ready by the time the old version expires. Given that the Renderosity version of this product was torpedoed when Rendo re-did their store, I really wish that Taosoft would make the product go to Read Only when the expiration date hits rather than completely locking it up (thought you can, obviously, fool it by changing the date on your computer.)
The pluses and minuses of the Store's Product Library have been noted by others, so I won't go into them other than to note again that the DAZ Products Bowser adds a lot of functions to the product library, and it can be quicker to use the PL to jump to the product read me or find an invoice date and purchase number.
I actually find myself using the search function of DIM a lot as well. It's pretty limited, but if I want to figure out where a product actually installed as opposed to where it theoretically should have installed if PAs didn't insist on creating subfolders with their names, putting sets in props, light presets under lights, etc., there's no fater way than to search for the item in DIM and then check the installation path.
Finally, when all else fails, trust in Google. I use it more for products bought at other stores, but when all you can remember is that there was a product that had a stick of butter with it, googling DAZ3d stick of butter will show the way... and then you can use one of the above methods to find out if you have it.
Yes . more so now that daz does not include the read me's anymore.
The Smart Content pane's search is, however, more powerful and more configurable so - assuming the database is at least populated - it may be better to use that for searching even if you then right-click on an item in the results and elect to show in the Content Library.
DIM will export all of that except the image in a nice CSV file.
I did not know that. Huh. Thanks for the tip. I'll test this out.
i do browse my product library quite often. usually it's because when i upload sth on devArt, i like to cite the sources/creators (exact name & PA), and it's faster to check the products in the store than to put together the bits of information from the panels in the DS interface, filenames etc.
also, i often remember having (or believe to have, haha) an item but can't pinpoint what it was exactly, in which package - just a vague idea. seeing the pictures in my product library helps me find them in my runtime. and yup i'm one of those who almost rediscovers products i bought ages ago and never used, too :D
when not my product library, i also browse the store with the browser addon set on "my products" - actually i wish i could pdf print those lists with the thumbnails, would be awesome since i could even separate them by figure etc, but the format is not great once inside print edit...
Thanks I weill paste examples from my DAZ Store My Account Product Library.