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.