Yet another category talk.

Ron Knights

I confess that, after 25+ years I've learned the joy of trusting DIM to install all my content, unmolested.

I still find Categories confusing. Maybe I use it in a way that is not intended.

I look at Categories as a Sleight of Hand game. I use the "ghost representation" of the files to organize content the way that works for me.

I don't really think in terms of Categories.

I really love using the system to organize massive amounts of content, such as my many "Western-related" items.

I use the same system that I used before adopting Categories "for real."

I still need to manually download every file that is already downloaded an installed by DIM.

That's the only way I can track where DIM put all the pieces.

nemesis10

Ah, you are tempting me!  "I use the "ghost representation" of the files to organize content the way that works for me." is a category.  Nonetheless, DIM can tell you where the pieces are installed.  The little 'i" in a circle will take you to the readme which show the complete path and the 3 vertical dots will lead toyou to the files in place so you can check the path.

Richard Haseltine

If you have a system that works for you then use it and don't worry about categories. I would avoid breaking them, as they are used in support of other features, but you certainly don't need to use them directly or spend time tweaking them.

Ron Knights

I gave up on read me files maybe 20 years ago. Most of them don't really say anything that I find useful.

I don't break anything by using categories. But you know that, right?!

 

Richard Haseltine

Ron Knights said:

I gave up on read me files maybe 20 years ago. Most of them don't really say anything that I find useful.

I don't break anything by using categories. But you know that, right?!

I meant don't break categories (e.g. by moving files around outside Daz Studio).

 

Ron Knights

Oh Heck no!

I use Categories exclusively now.

jjoyner

I find Categories to be mostly helpful, but, yes, there are cases where they can be confusing.  On a case-by-case basis for products, I try to reassign one or more assigned Categories.  Sometimes, that works, and sometimes not because the Category assignment is baked more deeply into the content and my attempts results in items being assigned to two categories..  That’s usually even more confusing and I delete the Category that I tried to assign.

For several years, in the Tags tab of an item I have been adding Keywords to products, as needed, to help me find content via a keyword search.  Sometimes I may add a unifying genre keyword (such as scifi so that I don’t have to depend on the variations used by vendors such as SciFi, Sci-Fi, or Sci Fi; or medieval, etc.), a vendor and/or store name (usually for products from third party sites), etc.  I don’t need to assign keywords to every item in a product.  I assign a keyword to just one item in a product.  A keyword search brings up entire product packages that contains the keyword.

Also, you can leave Notes to yourself in a product but they are not searchable.

Ron Knights

Maybe I've missed the point here. I don't really use "Categories" to categorize things.

I actually use them to duplicate the same structure we have in our Content itself.

By using this method, I can place links to the products and ignore "PA" folders, etc.

 

Elor

jjoyner said:

For several years, in the Tags tab of an item I have been adding Keywords to products, as needed, to help me find content via a keyword search.  Sometimes I may add a unifying genre keyword (such as scifi so that I don’t have to depend on the variations used by vendors such as SciFi, Sci-Fi, or Sci Fi; or medieval, etc.), a vendor and/or store name (usually for products from third party sites), etc.  I don’t need to assign keywords to every item in a product.  I assign a keyword to just one item in a product.  A keyword search brings up entire product packages that contains the keyword.

If Moyra is set as the artist of your version of the 'La Ferme for Old Country Farmhouse' product, typing key::Moyra should get you every product with 'Moyra' as the artist without the need to add a tag:

I don't use tags, but I think I will add at least a Renderosity tag because I don't know if you can get only items from a specific store (the Renderosity store was created by Content Wizard, no idea how to create one myself, the metadata were created using Daz metadata editor though) because key::renderosity only shows me a list of products with a link to the Renderosity store of an artist.