I've been using a single runtime with DS and it's starting to get very crowded and slow things down.  I make extensive use of custom categories and rarely use any of the Daz Categories.  Lately, I've been thinking of wiping everything and starting over, using multiple runtimes to help keep things organized.  I would like to have one for M4/V4, GENESIS, Enviroments, etc.

Before I start such a massive undertaking, I would like some advice from others who have done this.

What are the advantages and disadvantages?

How will this effect a project where I have to pull from multiple runtimes?

Can I still use the Custom categories feature in DS 4.6 Pro?

How many runtimes can I use?

Is there a tutorial or website that can show me the best way to set them up?

I know this is a very open ended type question, but I have some major projects that I want to start and if I decide to do this, I need to do it before I start them.

Thanks for any help you can give!

I can answer a few of your questions:

What are the advantages and disadvantages?

The obvious being you have less "bloat" and can find things quicker, but it also, as you already mentioned, keep things more organized.

How will this effect a project where I have to pull from multiple runtimes?

As long as the volumes or drives you have the runtimes installed on are mounted and available to your system, there should be no problem - I personally have 9 differnt runtimes spread over 5 different drives.

How many runtimes can I use?

Not sure what the actual limit is, probably the limit of your file system.

Perhaps someone else can give you hints on the other questions you have, but the one's I answered have worked for me for some time now, even when I have updated Daz Studio several times.

-AniMajik

Quote - Can I still use the Custom categories feature in DS 4.6 Pro?

Yes.  Use the "Content DB Maintenance > Export User Data" function to back-up your custom categories.  It can take a long time if you have a lot of data -- I categorize everything my own way, and it can take 30-45 minutes to export, and I've heard from someone who has several hundred GB's of content that it takes over an hour for him.

Aside from giving you a back-up, this saves only the relative file locations.  So you can then reset your content database, split up your runtimes (making sure you add each new location to DS's list), and Re-Import Metadata (you can choose to import just the User Data if you don't want DAZ' default metadata also), and while importing the user data it will figure out which of the multiple runtimes each item is in.

Quote - ... Lately, I've been thinking of wiping everything and starting over, using multiple runtimes to help keep things organized. ...

What are the advantages and disadvantages?

...

Can I still use the Custom categories feature in DS 4.6 Pro?

How many runtimes can I use?

  Some answers and info:

  I don't know if there is any upper limit on runtimes (I don't THINK there is, but don't quote me on that).  I haven't counted but would guess I have in the hundreds, as I'm mostly using one per product.

  I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "custom categories"; I can create my own categories and organize content within them as I wish in the Content Library tab.  You do have to map each of the runtimes so DS knows where to look for content (the same way you mapped your current runtime, if you aren't just using default locations), but other than that you don't have to do anything different to set up multiple runtimes.

  The advantage I get out of it (with one product per runtime) is that if files get messed up, I can just delete the entire folder and reinstall to clean it up without worrying about other products.

  There are several disadvantages I have found.  One is that at least some things don't work; there was a plugin for DS long ago (Finder, I think) that couldn't handle more than a small number of runtimes.  There may be other things I don't know about that I'm breaking by doing this.  I have also found products that needed to be installed together in the same folder (the installers required this, however I think with the advent of the DIM zips in place of the executables and the latest version of DS, possibly that restriction may not be there anymore, but I haven't verified this.)  And of course you have to map each runtime, plus back up/restore those mappings, which can be really tedius.   This may also negate some of the benefits of using DIM (DAZ Install Manager) which allows you to easily mass install/uninstall into a location.