Padlocking Startup.duf
ebergerly
Posts: 3,255
I spend a whole lot of time setting up my startup scene just the way I like it. Stretched over 3 monitors, with all the tabs the way I like, everything just so.
And guaranteed, for some unknown reason, one day suddenly my startup scene is back to the default. No clue why.
Maybe because I'm synchronizing my user files with my backup computer on the network and something goes goofy and overwrites my startup file. I don't know, but it drives me wacky.So this weekend my main job is to figure out how to padlock startup.duf so nobody can change it. Not ever. Not in 1 year. Not in 10 years. Not in a million years.
Well, unless I want to change it.
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
You mean your layout? Window>Workspace>Save Layout will allow you to reload it if it gets changed.
Why not just make an extra backup of the file (only one backup of important files isn't the best solution).
Yeah, maybe I'll save it to a flash drive, and lock it in a safe, and hire a guard to stand watch.
Thanks.
Okay, so it looks like I have a Preferences setting to load "startup.duf" upon startup of Studio. And that's a .duf file. But it looks like if I save a layout it's a .DSA file, stored in a different location (the Users/appdata/... subfolder). But I don't back up that appdata folder since it's too much of a pain to figure out all the appdata folders you need to back up. So I just save it as a standard scene file in the folder I usually back up. But for some reason my startup.duf (that's what I call it) gets overwritten, back to the default.
This is giving me a headache. I'll just save startup.duf on a flash drive and store it in a bank vault.
In windows right click on the icon for the scene and set the attribute to read only and it wont be accidentally overwritten.
Hey wait a minute...I guess I always assumed that a regular scene file (.duf) also stores stuff like the window layouts and configurations. Is that not true? Is it only stored in a layout (.dsa) file? If so, then I need to backup the layout file. I'm confused.
As Richard said the Layout is saved as a Workspace and the default scene is loaded with studio with all your default render settings. Both would need backing up if you want spares.
I have a scene saved; I then write-protect it.
Right click on the file > Properties > Attributes; check Read only.
I don’t think the duf scene stores Studio layout details. Just save the layout as well.
Yeah, I tried it and I think you're right. Drat. Darn. As soon as you make a layout change and save the scene file, it seems to make that the default for next time, which means apparently it overwrites what you saved in the "Save as Layout" file.
So I guess I need to backup the .DSA layout file. Which means I need to add it to the synchronize list of files. Or save it on a thumb drive or something and try to remember next time where to copy it to to restore the layout.
This is a pain. If you save a default layout file, and then during your work on a particular scene, if you make the slightest layout change and save the scene it becomes the new default. Or maybe I'll just change the .dsa layout file to make it read only and hope Studio doesn't freak next time I save a scene and it can't write to the .dsa file.
Shoot, even making the layout .dsa file read-only didn't work. I loaded a blank scene, made a minor layout change, saved the scene, and restarted Studio. Studio didn't complain, it just overwrote the default layout and showed the changed layout. Even without me saving a new layout. So where is the current layout stored???
FWIW, here's the location of the saved layout file:
C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Roaming\DAZ 3D\Studio4\user layouts
DS remembers the layout between sessions, that's how it is designed. It doesn't remember that it is meant to use "Layout X" and reload it each time, you have to do that yourself. You probably could create a script to auto-load to reset the layout.
Right, but how? What file does it access to remember the layout between sessions? I'd need to find that file first before making a script
EDIT: Ahhh, okay, you go to Window/Workspace/Select Layout and it will load the saved layout and overwrite the previous one it remembered. So I guess each time you open Studio it uses the last layout which was in effect, but you can overwrite that by loading a saved layout.dsa file. And there are 3 files in "C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Roaming\DAZ 3D\Studio4\user layouts " associated with that saved layout, so I suppose you need to backup all 3.
Weird. Even if I delete all user layouts in "C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Roaming\DAZ 3D\Studio4\user layouts " it still remembers the previous layout. Somewhere there must be a file with that info.
The working layout is saved in the .dsx files in the main studi4 folder, not the User Layouts folder. When you load a layout it is read and applied, but no link is maintained to it and the saved file in user layouts is not modified by any changes you make.