External Runtime Part 1

[Jherrith]

Have problems waiting for Poser to load because your runtime is rather large and unorganized? Would love to spend more time creating art instead of looking for that special item for that special character?

Well, the elegant solution is to have individual runtimes that organize your inventory. This will involve a lot of set up work on your part as there is no easy and quick way of doing it. If you have been doing this as long as myself which is only 8 years you probably have a collection that measures in the GB's as in tens of GB's.

So how do you get some sense of order, my first step was to break all my products out by the year in the modified column of Windows Explorer. This makes it a bit easier to deal with the volume of product. Once I did that then I started creating other folders broadly named, such as Gals, Men, Hair and so forth. Next in each of my broadly named folders then I created specific folders for each character. Aiko 3, Aiko 4, Victoria 3, Victoria 4, Mavka, Cookie and so forth in my Gals folder and then do so with my other folders for the Men, Hair, Props, and however detailed you want your sorting to be. Remember the more time you spend on this the easier it will be in the future to find anything that you purchase.

So once you got your folder structure set up you can then start with the year dated master folders, and start moving your zip files to each folder, start with the ones that are easily identified, and sort them out into the folders that you have created for them.
First problem this will take a very long time dependent on how large your collection happens to be, mine as mentioned covers several years. So work on it a little at a time and be precise it makes the end result so much more conducive for efficiency.

Well now that you have a start on sorting the files out you are going to run into several that you will be unable to determine just exactly what they are for, well if it is in a zip folder it is simple enough to go to open it and then find the read me file within it and figure out what you have and now you can put it in the proper folder. Product from DAZ is a bit harder but open a browser and then with the older product you can pop in the part number and you can get the details needed as to whom it is for or what it happens to be, some of the newer stuff doesn't have easy to reference part numbers. Still easy enough to check your account details and look at all orders and you can find your information in that manner.

I won't kid you this part is the hardest and most time consuming task you will ever do with Poser I assume that DAZ has a similar format with a runtime and such so these same principals of sorting can be applied there. Whether or not you can do external runtimes is beyond the scope of this thread as I do not use DAZ.

[thelufias]

Would you believe I have the original set of jpg's with this on it that you sent many moons ago......But this is great......thus far LOL

[Jherrith]

I see and you have still not got them sorted out yet have thee?

[thelufias]

Ummmm.....Did I say I found them......I said I had them.....cause I never delete ANYTHING....

Until now.....been doing a lot of that as of late to prepare for the new puter.....  and clean a drive for a friend.

[Jherrith]

Ah the plot thickens