Renaming Files- Implications Of How That Works and DIM Question

Novica

I am re-doing Content Library.  My question is  (using example so it's clear what I am asking)

Under Genesis 2>Characters  if there is VendorWhatever>Character 1  can I move the Character 1 files to that position and remove the VendorWhatever so my character names are in alphabetical order? Or will that mess up other file paths? (And if yes on some, no on some, depending on how the vendor did the files- what do I look for to be able to tell?) 

Second, I'm bringing some of the external hard drive files from my Content Library and manually putting them into my empty 4.8 studio on the new computer (I am starting from scratch to customize it.)  How does that work so far as DIM recognizing what's been installed? Does it only know what it has installed, or will it also show (in the DIM Installed section) the other DAZ content which is already located in the studio?

 

 

fixmypcmike

Moving the files from e.g. G2F>Characters>Vendor>Clair to G2>Characters>Clair shouldn't break them, although it will make DIM unable to update or uninstall them.  I use Categories for that.

DIM ony knnows what it installed.  If you move your entire content folder to a new location and don;t want to uninstall/reinstall with DIM, you can edit the manifests to make DIM use the new location.  The manifests are located in the ManifestFiles subfolder of the DIM documents folder, one .dsx fie for each package installed with DIM.  Each one has a line that reads:

<UserInstallPath VALUE="Q:/All Runtimes/My DAZ 3D Library"/>

(that's the path I use, it will show whatever path you used).  You can use an editor like Notepad++ to edit that line in all the files to the new path, and DIM will think it installed them to the new path.  Note that te separator is / even on Windows.

Novica

Oh dear, I forgot about updates. Thanks for reminding me. Let me make sure I'm getting this right then-

What if I used Categories (which I am, for customizing) and I have a Genesis 2 section with my characters, and I do the character Clair there as Genesis 2>Characters>Clair. If I delete the files (or file reference) from above (the original location in Daz Studio Formats>Daz>etc) if there is an update from Dim, it will put the updated one back at the top in the original location? I can grab it from there easily and replace the one down in Categories. That way I don't have to track down folders- but that information is very handy, thank you very much- and I might use it in the future. 

Novica

Oops, the other question was this- regarding DIM then, if I accidentally install a character that I had already loaded from the external hard drive,  will it place duplicate files at the original location?

fixmypcmike

If you use Categories you don't have to worry about about updates -- the actual files stay where DIM put them, so DIM can update them.  Your category is where you want it, but it reference the actual file location, so there's no problem if the file gets updated.  I organize everything in my own categories (outside of Default) the way that makes sense to me, so it doesn't matter what the actual folders are or where the metadata categorized them.  The only time you have to do anything is if an update actually changes the file names or paths.

fixmypcmike

If DIM installs a file that already exists (because another product includes the same file, or because the product was already installed manually) it saves that information in a file named InstallManagerFileRegister.json

In DIM go to Settings > Installation and right-click on the path you installed to, and there's an option to "Fix Installed File Registry" -- that will correct the json file so that it doesn't count that file twice.  (when you run that option you'll get a bunch of error messages in the DIM log -- you can ignore them).

Novica

Fixmypcmike said:

If you use Categories you don't have to worry about about updates -- the actual files stay where DIM put them, so DIM can update them.  Your category is where you want it, but it reference the actual file location, so there's no problem if the file gets updated.  I organize everything in my own categories (outside of Default) the way that makes sense to me, so it doesn't matter what the actual folders are or where the metadata categorized them.  The only time you have to do anything is if an update actually changes the file names or paths.

Gotcha. So curious, you leave the Daz Studio Format section alone, you don't delete those once you've created it in Category? Does it take up more resources/memory on the computer to have it in two places? Since I will be installing a lot back into Studio, I've always wondered what having the files in two places inside Studio does, if anything. Sorry about the basic questions, but I am SO not technical.

Novica

Fixmypcmike said:

If DIM installs a file that already exists (because another product includes the same file, or because the product was already installed manually) it saves that information in a file named InstallManagerFileRegister.json

In DIM go to Settings > Installation and right-click on the path you installed to, and there's an option to "Fix Installed File Registry" -- that will correct the json file so that it doesn't count that file twice.  (when you run that option you'll get a bunch of error messages in the DIM log -- you can ignore them).

Good to know, I'll jot that down and hopefully won't mess up and need it. 

fixmypcmike

The files aren't in two places.  Categories is just a pointer to where the actual files are.

Novica

Fixmypcmike said:

The files aren't in two places.  Categories is just a pointer to where the actual files are.

Thank you, I suspected as much but that makes it very clear. You should write a book, it seems there's very little that you don't know