I saw the announcement for DAZ Central, but I didn't see anything that it offers over and above DIM and Connect. I'm glad I didn't jump on board.

Yes, I am not a fan of DIM because even when I download and install, I still have to open up DAZ and install or update all over again, along with the perpetual updates that never seem to go away.

That being said, I jumped and I paid for installing this messed up program. You were wise not to do this m'friend. It has promise, hope they fixe all the issues soon.

Do bear in mind that Daz Central is aimed at newer users, offering a simplified experience. It isn't intended to replace DIM/Connect, which are more powerful/dangerous/flexible/confusing. Please make sure you post suggestions to the main, official thread https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/407131/beta-for-dazcentral-your-new-content-manager#latest

Question.  Will DAZ Central eventually replace DIM?  I see that in beta but I want to make sure what's going to happen.  If not why have three ways to install content, actually 4 if you manually download and install!  Seems a bit overkill to me!  

We've been told DIM will continue, DazCentral is for newer users who may be confused by all the options in DIM

Question.  Will DAZ Central eventually replace DIM?  I see that in beta but I want to make sure what's going to happen.  If not why have three ways to install content, actually 4 if you manually download and install!  Seems a bit overkill to me!  

Hey.  

Please read this with an inner voice of mild concern.  Do not use inner sarcasm voice, or any derogatory tone, because this isn't a rant.  It's simply feedback, my impression, and a suggestion that would actually make this a favorable thing.     Onwards...

I was less than impressed with Daz Central.  The email that pointed me to it sounded promising.  I downloaded and installed it.  Okay.  No, not so okay.

One of the features is to have the tutorial videos available on the Dashboard in an easy to see location.  So I picked the first one, and was highly disappointed.  Here's the video it eventually landed me at on YouTube:  

For those who don't wish to click it, it's a 2016 tutorial showing an extremely outdated UI that looks nothing like today's UI.  In the comments that are years old, people were asking for an up to date tutorial please, and of course, now it's 2020 and at the time of this post, hasn't been updated in the least.  That killed all interest I've had in wanting to watch any other tutorials.  

Next disappointment was showing me my current product purchases, and I can open them in Daz Studio 4.12 with one click.  Tried it, it works.  However, I could do the same thing in two clicks.  I can click to open Daz, then click the 'new' tagged product within Daz itself, on the products pane that is already open when Daz loads.  So they saved me one click, and perhaps a few inches on the mouse wheel to scroll through products to find the 'new' tag, if I was tag hunting.  I know what I bought by name, actually, and I find it easily regardless.  Still just two clicks.  Is the cost of an entire program development really worth only one click?  

Now for a suggestion... why not actually put in a feature that isn't available in Daz Studio itself?  Like the ability to go to your saved files and delete a saved file and everything related to it in one click?  As of right now, you can't delete it.  You see, Daz is the only program I know where a save file isn't easy to get rid of.  I can load up a 20 year old program, click delete saved file/saved game/saved document/saved whatever, and it's gone, confirmation dialog or not.  I can load up a relatively new program and do the same thing.  Saved file/saved game/saved document/saved database/saved image/saved whatever, and it's gone.  No lingering thumbnails with error reporting hanging out anywhere.  

Except for Daz Studio.  

I looked it up once, a while back.  I have to delete the DUF, go into library whatever, find the related files, delete them, find another spot... yadda yadda yakity smackety and you know the rest, to delete just one old scene that I no longer use.  Because of this, I am highly reluctant to save any scene, because once it's there, I guess it's there forever, as I really don't have the time to become a coder to hunt down all the bits and pieces that Daz Studio will report as a prolem that's left over through a thumbnail connection that will never vanish otherwise.  

I just want to right click the saved file in the saved files area, and choose a delete option that doesn't exist as of today, and that be that and it's gone, thumbnail, DUF and any other bits of code connected to it gone as well.  Or have that doable on Daz Central.  If so, I'll reinstall the nearly useless thing and be happy for that feature all by itself. 

Thank you for your valuable time.  

Oh WOW... I am so sorry I lost my way in this thread of discussion... Now I have decided to allow only Daz Connect to install some of those free stuff. But as regards the DIM - it just does not work on my system and I have yet to discover where or why. Daz Support are at their wits end too.

Worst still recently I tried out the new Daz Central - BUT upon installation of the program - my Smart content stuff all disappeared! So after all the checking and reinstalling - not working - I finally made a breakthrough! Well, the program was looking for CMS to fill the information which was lacking! It seems to have been taken from it usual location to another... my Local C: Drive/ProgramData/Daz 3D/cms

So I opened my Daz Studio Program and hit Edit/Preferences

Preferences floating menu will appear - Just look for CMS Setting CLICK it!

Cluster directory will be missing - and you will need to click the Arrow Down and Browse.

YOU will find your cluster in - Local C: Drive/ProgramData/Daz 3D/cms

After that a BLUE button will appear in the Smart Folder with the words CMS written - click it - you can now login and reinstall metadata via the small icon at the top of the smart content (Click an icon with triangle and lines) find Content DB Maintenance.

Hope this helps.

Happened to me too. Eventually nothing worked. I had to do reset my PC again (second time this week because of DIM errors - most likely caused by me) and start over. I also couldn't find a batch installation with Daz Central instead of having to click on thousands of products individually. 

Why not just uninstall Daz Central?

I installed all my products painstakingly manually! Because even the Install Manager has gone out of whack on my system. So I thought installing Daz Central could be another venue of installing new products! Sigh! All blank now in my Daz Studio Smart Content! Even the ones I manually installed metadata!

What can I do? Please advise.

What I did when I realizer Smart Content was another layer of confusion on top of the - sometimes - cunfusing placements of assets were to leave it be and manually build the original Content Library to my liking. It takes a lot of space and work to have all the assets repacked but it's only done one time if there are no updates. Next time it's time for a reinstall I allready have the assets sorted the way I want them.

I installed all my products painstakingly manually! Because even the Install Manager has gone out of whack on my system. So I thought installing Daz Central could be another venue of installing new products! Sigh! All blank now in my Daz Studio Smart Content! Even the ones I manually installed metadata!

What can I do? Please advise.

I saw the announcement for DAZ Central, but I didn't see anything that it offers over and above DIM and Connect. I'm glad I didn't jump on board.

I thought DazCentral looked interesting, so I installed it.  What a mistake.  Now DIM and DC think none of my products are installed, and the smart content pane is empty.  

After looking through DIM's settings, I noticed that all the directory paths are now pointing to a directory that doesn't exist, and definitely isn't my actual archive directories.  I cannot change the path, since DIM insists on adding "/Applications/Data/DAZ3D/InstallManager/" onto whatever base path I give it, so I can't even point it at the correct directory.  I have no idea what's wrong with Smart Content.  Someone suggested reimporting metadata, so I tried that.  It ran for 30 minutes and Smart Content is still blank.  This is fun.

DazCentral is also broken.  when I open it, it shows me all my products, which is nice.  When I click "Open" it opens daz studio, then sh!ts the bed.  Says the file it is trying to open doesnt exist. When I look at the setting for DC, I noticed that it says "Install Paths Managed by DIM", which we know is broken, so that's probably a fail right there.  When I change the path to where my manifest folder actually is, DC updates and says I have nothing installed, not even Daz Studio.  SO MUCH FUN.

So it's been 24 hours since i got the email heralding the new Daz Central.  I see other posts from users who have been kicked by this, but I haven't seen a peep from anyone at Daz about what to do or when a fix is coming.  Please advise.

**UPDATE** 

When I copied my manifest download and thumbnails directories to a folder that matched the path in DIM, DIM correctly updated to show what I do and do not have installed.  But Smart Content did not.  And I do not want to keep the files in that kludged directory.  I have three copies of the download directory now (at 300 gigs each) and I am afraid the next product I buy will go into a directory that Daz can't see it it.

I just had this issue (thanks to Fixmypcmike and SPew for confirming a fix). Now I'm curious to see if there is a config, or registry entry for the default locations in DAZ Central. 
It doesn't really give you the individual directory options, and that might be the problem. Especially for users with non-default locations.

I like the interface of DAZ Central, and being able to see images of my content, but not at the cost of loosing GBs of content, and custom configurations. 

Since the installation of DAZ Central I can't make renders in DAZ Studio. They are pitch black.

I didn't do anything but downloaded and installed DAZ Central.

Alla scenes, even those that worked perfectly earlier today,  are black when rendered.
(Just to be sure I updated the drivers of the graphics card, but that didn't change anything.)
Any ideas what to do?
EDIT: After some experimenting I've found out this:
- I can make 3DLight renders.
- I can make IRAY renders with the CPU.
That means DAZ Central changed/affected something that has to do with my Graphics card - nVidia RTX 2080 Ti.

Are you sure it wasn't just a DS update? The minimum driver version for Iray in the latest build of DS is several steps newer than the previous

I am not sure. I followed a link in an email from DAZ about DAZCentral. Downloaded and installed. If there also was a newer version of DS installed in the process, I'm not aware of that.
The problem remains the same regardless, the renders are pitch black.

Since the installation of DAZ Central I can't make renders in DAZ Studio. They are pitch black.

I didn't do anything but downloaded and installed DAZ Central.

Alla scenes, even those that worked perfectly earlier today,  are black when rendered.
(Just to be sure I updated the drivers of the graphics card, but that didn't change anything.)
Any ideas what to do?
EDIT: After some experimenting I've found out this:
- I can make 3DLight renders.
- I can make IRAY renders with the CPU.
That means DAZ Central changed/affected something that has to do with my Graphics card - nVidia RTX 2080 Ti.

Are you sure it wasn't just a DS update? The minimum driver version for Iray in the latest build of DS is several steps newer than the previous

After installing DAZ Central the program stated that DAZ Studio was not installed. I tried changing the base path to no avail. I opened DAZ and got the PostgreSQL failure. I uninstalled DAZ Central and now all of my smart content is gone. All of the content is listed under the available tab. One thing I did notice was that DAZ Central was looking for 4.12.0, but I have 4.12.1 installed. I opened Install Manager and all of my installed content was missing as well and gave me the option of installing everything under the ready to download tab. I verified all the installation paths were correct in Install Manager and also DAZ Studio. This sucks. I don't want to spend the rest of the day reinstalling 265G worth of content that is already there.

After installing Daz central I show the same issue, that DC says Daz is not installed and when I try to use Daz now it shows all my content needs to be updated before I can use it .

That is a major issue because I have a TB plus of content and a very slow loading internet of only 3mb/sec that will take forever. There must be a work around. I have thousands invested in this program .

I am not happy. I hope someone has a solution.

In the settings you can disable automatic update.  It doesn't recognize content installed with Connect.

Skip Daz central got it..

Since the installation of DAZ Central I can't make renders in DAZ Studio. They are pitch black.

I didn't do anything but downloaded and installed DAZ Central.

Alla scenes, even those that worked perfectly earlier today,  are black when rendered.
(Just to be sure I updated the drivers of the graphics card, but that didn't change anything.)
Any ideas what to do?

I reinstalled through DAZ Central and so far back to normal. I wish you luck!

Now I am even more confused. This thread states that DAZ Central is in beta. But I just got an email stating that DAZ Central is now our new Content Manager?! There is no mention of a Beta version... and nothing stating that DAZ Central is only available as a PC Version.