Hello everyone Can any of you recommend a system of organisation for model files? I now have over 1000 and they are in some disarray. Obviously there are main categories such as architectural, animal, plant and mineral, but should I get into sub-categories or should it be kept more simple? Thanks and Happy Weekend Mivan

When I started to amass files I set up that exact style of filing. Burned them to CD, now I have a small Library. Seems to work great. Good luck.

Don't know whether it will help you, but I put up a directory when a number of candidates for a particular directory rises. So I have weapons, vehicles, buildings, people, animals, plants, vessels and anything. :-) You can alwys create subdirectories: architecture buildings - modern - ancient - ruins ornaments - outside - inside

I'm not quite there yet with the amount of models but you might make a text document which lists the name of the model and which directory or CD it is in. this might be a pain if you already have a bunch of models...

Aye, you can use Windows to print out lists of whatever is on a CD (file structure, etc.), and it should help you keep track of what you burned a little bit. I just burned off 4 GB of Brycefiles and .psd's yesterday, tedious but I think everything MIGHT be okay now! (laughs, Poser 5 still doesn't work!)

One thing that helped me alot was to make a small quick render of each model....now I can quickly browse through the thumbnails to find the particular model I'm after. I've started organising my models by the maker, all of Nitro's models together in one folder, all of Helmut's in another, and so on.

Hmmmm, 2 gigs of models on the HD, and that's not counting the 6 gigs of Brycefiles, and 5 gigs of poser files... Time for a bigger HD.

There's a program, I think 3DExploration, that will help you with thumbnailing. I can't remember, but I think I saw it make thumbnails of just about everything Poser related. Of coure, this is irrelevant to Bryce... (shrugs)

There's some programs that will help out. Here's what I do..now..;) Every model I download goes into a Bryce directory on the hard drive. I rename each file as filename_author_website and then download the thumbnail with the same name (+1..sometimes Windows ME seems to overwrite the zip with a jpg..go figure) Once I hit about 200-400 meg, I'll burn a CD. I've got everything 'organized' in MS Access (whatever the method you go with, get your organization started before downloading..;) woops..too late for me. I can integrate the thumbnail into my record, tho by now (10,000+ objects, and 1200+ sites listed, and 52 burned CD's) the whole megilla is about 380 meg. This is probably the worst way to do it, but it does help to make sense of it. Just come up with an organizing plan, and stick with it.

Subdirectories!Subdirectories!Subdirectories! First I tried orginizing by file type, but I couldn't find anything. Next I tried by author but I had the same result. Now I sort by Type: Plant - Animal - Prop - misc and subdivide when neccessary. I keep Tuts in a seperate folder and subdivide them by topic. I spend at least 10 hours a month sorting but it's still a mess. I'm thinking about an indexing system similar to the one Little_Dragon claims to have. (I suspect in his case it's due largely to a highly intelligent, organized mind and a retentive memory ), but an indexing system seems like a good idea anyway.

For model organization, it's very hard to beat 3D Exploration. It autogenerates thumbnails, will let you rotate/zoom the model in a preview window and does conversions too. I started working with them in version one (when it was first developed in Russia) and have never looked back. Since it went to Right Hemisphere it's really grown into a great program. You can find a link to it on our homepage at www.baument.com my .02 Ed

You should make a library with differnt sorts of models in diffent directory's and if possible make little tumbnail-images that go with th models so you can browse though easily. Tumbnails save a lot of time compared to importing a lot of files searching for the right model.

you could also make a database with preset query's for easy searching, but that takes some time to make.

yup Rayraz..already well down that road..;) And it's taken, altogether, about 6 months of coding, entering, searching (please, all you modellers out there, but contact info in your readme's, or even your name sometimes..;), removing dupes, finding dead links, I could go on...;)

I'm a purist (I like to build everything myself), so I don't really have to many free downloads and most of the ones I have where already sorted on the disc including tumbnails. Luckily I haven't been in need of a database yet.

one of ten-thousand-three-hundred-and-fifty-two! That's a lot!

That doesn't count the ones I downloaded from Freestuff after I posted..;) Roadrunner here at home, T3 line at work..makes it a little too easy..;)