I have my zip files on a external harddrive placed in folders for which runtime category I would normally place them in if I installed them. However lately I've been rethinking my strategy.

I have numerous runtimes - Goth & Spook, Generation 4, Genesis 1 & 2, Fairytale, the curious collection, West Park collection, and many many more.

My problem is I'm finding myself wanting take things from x category and use them with y category. Or I'm finding myself buying alot from particular artists and their stuff could fit into one or two runtimes. I am trying to figure out a way that I have all my zips easily organized and possibly eliminating some runtimes just to make it easier to find what I'm looking for.

How do you have your items organized? Any tips?

I have my runtimes organized by category, such as :

Animals

Animal Textures

Animals Fantasy

Architecure

Fantasy Architecture

etc., and so on. I have 32 runtimes all total on my external HD. I did give DM thier own runtime since I have so much stuff from them. I split A3, A4, H3, H4 into 2 runtimes and gave V3, M3, V4, M4 their own runtimes as well as their clothing. It works for me very well, I can find things very easily.

I have one single runtime.

When I want to find something, I know which runtime to look in :-)

Sure, there's a lot of stuff in there but the library is so good now it is easy to find stuff.

I use the Favourites feature a lot. Using Favourites in an organised (hierarchical) way means that everything can be found in a logical place regardless of where it is stored within the main runtime libraries. And an item can appear in more than one place in the Favourites hierarchy without taking up any more space,as the favourites are just links to the actual items.

Spend the time to learn how to use the favourites feature and the need for multiple runtimes goes away :-)

be sure to back up your external  drive cause if you dont  you can loose  a bunch of goodies

All projects have a separate runtime.  Any assets used in the project are copied to it.  It is archived along with all the scene files and renders along with any and all other information and "paperwork" related it.  That way if a client wants to revisit a project or there is some problem, we can pull the archive out of offsite storage and go through it.

There is a way to have your content be easily portable. I am not sure back compatibile from PP2014 this is.

Make a folder for the product.  In it put  the Library file(s), OBJ, PMD, INJ/REM poses, add0n props and their components.  Material poses (Mat) in a subfolder and Textures in a subfolder of Mat.

Edit the pahs to be as short as possible.  For the geometry it is :.obj  - for the morphs =  :.pmd,   - for the textures = ":Mat:texturefoldername:_.jpg"

I have found that when using minimal paths, a Mat pose does not like finding a parallel folder. It is OK with going further out a branch, but not so much back to the trunk.

Everything is organized and easy to find. 

The folder can be in any Library, but if the extension does not match, double click or drag/drop? is necessary.

There is no thumbnail for a folder.

Editing the paths can be streamlined by using PhilC PZ3editor.  It has a batch plugin which will FIND/REPLACE a path in a whole folder of files at one click.  Just make sure that any PMD files are temporarily parked somewhere else while doing this.

You can have a storage Runtime and an active Runtime and COPY in the folders you are using.   With very short paths, which Runtime does not matter.

These are my libraries:

Apollo
Dawn
DawnConversions (more of a work directory when xferring things from daz<->poser)
Daz Studio (Genesis 1, 2, and Daz only lights/shaders/etc are in here)
Environment (everything from props to buildings and full env+domes ie terradome)
Freebies
Generation 3
Generation 4 Clothing
Generation 4 People
Hair (since I use Netherworks' HCS and transfer hair among figures, it has it's own library)
Lisa's Botanicals (have almost the entire catalog, so she has her own runtime)
Pippin
Poser Lights and Shaders
PP2012 Content
PP2014 Content (these two are probably redundant)
Texture Work
Vehicles
Weapons
zStandalone Figures (z added to the front so it's the last runtime)

I used to have props, buildings, etc all in separate runtimes, but I have so many multi-object sets that I always ended up with props in the architecture runtime and so on. So I just smooshed it all down to one Environment runtime.

Oh wow I am getting quite a few ideas. I never thought of putting all the props into one. That would definately make it a lot easier. My plan is if I can narrow down what I really want I am going unistall and redo a bunch of things so my pc isn't messy. I do always backup my runtimes on two different external harddrives. I also have a copy of each zip file on the harddrives.

I used to have a runtime for each character, and a runtime for props, and runtimes for clothing. 

But I have a total of 379 Gigs in my runtimes at the moment (and a fair bit of stuff that hasn't been installed yet). With only a few runtimes, they rapidly became unwieldy.

My props runtime became so large, with so many nested folders and trees and branches that I could no longer find anything.

So I went with the thematic runtime. Modern clothing is such a big category that both M4 and V4 have their own "Modern Clothing" runtimes. But other clothing types go in with the appropriate props.

The advantage is that I will usually use no more than a few runtimes for any given project, and I can uncheck the ones in my Poser library that I rarely use except for special projects (such as Greco-Roman, or Eygpt). This makes the library finish its search a bit faster. :) (Though on my newer machine, it can handle having all the runtimes loaded at once, and it brings them up pretty quickly).

Also, if I'm stuck for ideas, I can consider combining assets from a couple of unlikely thematic runtimes, such as "Robots and Mecha" with "Religion" or "Post-Apocalyptic" with "Pirates" and "Gothic". Gives me ideas I might never have considered otherwise.

I have :

Post-apocalyptic

Grunge

Gothic

Modern Urban

Terrain and Nature

Fantasy and Fairy Tales

Faeries and Elves

Primitive and Dark Ages

Medieval through Renaissance

Reformation through Victorian

Early to Mid 20th Century

Rural and Gardens

Pirates and High Seas

Religion plus Angels and Demons

Sci-Fi

Viking

Greco-Roman

Egypt

Africa

Wild West

Animals

Monsters

Circus and Carnival

Materials and Lights

Poses

Robots and Mecha

Dynamic Clothing

Third Party (non-Daz, non-Poser) Figures

V4 -- All morphs and characters and fixes

M4 -- All morphs and characters and fixes

V4 Modern Clothing

M4 Modern Clothing

Hair (yes... one runtime just for hair -- It gives me lots of room and easy to find folders for all my conversions and refits).

Genesis for Poser

I divide each runtime even further to make categories for "interior" "exterior" "small props" "vegetation" "accessories" "weapons" or whatever the category might need. It means I can find just about anything when I want it. Despite the fairly large amount of stuff I have.

As I see it, a runtime is just another folder. Moving from one runtime to another isn't really any different from moving from one subfolder to another. Having lots of runtimes means I have an additional level in my hierarchy for organization, something I badly needed.

Oh, and I also have Test runtimes, where I load freebies, or new vendors, so I can test them and see where they fit, or if they fit other categories. And another runtime for Imported Objects (for those Turbo-squid freebies). And finally one for Backgrounds (where I keep a lot of 2D assets, background props, and envirodomes).

Quote - Spend the time to learn how to use the favourites feature and the need for multiple runtimes goes away :-)

Trust you to be so efficient and logical!

I still prefer separate runtimes so that I can find assets with the windows explorer. My reasoning: Soon as I get that dreaded "Poser not responding" as it searches for a texture or geometry that was improperly referenced... I used to panic. But with the way my runtimes are organized, I know exactly where -- which vendor, which texture folder, which geometry folder, etc -- to point the explorer window when Poser finally gives up. (It also helps with the ever present texture cross talk bug that I come across very frequently).

Also, if I decide to load someone else's product into a modelling or texturing app, I know precisely where to find their stuff and whatever changes or fixes I made to it.

Computers are fast. But when it comes to searching for stuff on my harddrive, my brain is way, way faster. Windows doesn't yet have any search algorithms that are worth a damn. :)

I have multiple runtimes (M4, V4, Gen3, Locations, Vehicles etc) plus I also have a Project Runtime (where all my own materials, poses and assembled characters go, under folders named for the project... this means if I go back through my images I know which folder the character is in). I also have a Test Runtime (not just for freebies, but also for the auto installers so I can rearrange the content to suit my file structure before dragging and dropping onto the appropriate runtime) as well as a separate hair runtime.

I have a runtime for each of my figures, and some themed runtimes for things I have a lot of ie building, furuniture, sci fi, weapons etc. Then I have folders in the runtimes to further organize things. for the women I have things broken out by type of clothes shirts, pants, skirts etc. For men its modern, historic, sci fi, etc.

Only people go into the charaters folder. All inanimate things go into the props folder reguardless of their extentions. All materials go into the materials folder even if they are mat poses. I have 2 sub folders in materials for the people, skin and clothes. In the clothes I have all mats in folders named after the item it's for.

Things that can be used for everybody, such as hair or procedural materials are in my main runtime.

I've often wondered if I would be better off merging all my runtimes and using folders as I am now using runtimes to separate content by character and theme.

Is there a limit on how big a runtime can be? My combined runtimes now total 111 gigs.

Can I simply merge them into one big one or does that screw up pathing?

See I have guite a few gigs as well. I'm trying to figure out how to organize the items in 'storage' and in 'runtimes'. I have it when I go to look for a file and can't remember which drive/folder I stored it in so I can find it and install it.

For that - finding in storage - I am thinking that ya need to figure out how you categorize an item - reproducably.  It needs to be filed in a way that two years from now, Ya still think of it the same way.  Finding something you know you have, is one thing.  Finding something that you forgot you have, or just bought on a whim, browsing the stacks, as it were,  Ya need to take time a figure out how YOU think.

  Hair,  I'm thinking:  very long, long, medium, short, very short, strange.

 Clothing -  is a problem for me.

Props -  mimic Target or another retailor?

If you have expansion products,  if a product comes with props,  if everything is not a a single folder = with subs,  how will you even know you have them?  The way these things come, the names used,  is eccentric and best.   Half the time, a template will not sort with its main file in a folder of zips, never mind any extension products.  Once unpacked, the naming is usually vendor ego-centric, certainly not Dewey decimal organized.

A product like P3DO Explorer shows a thumb for folder or zip, so you could render a jpeg of  what is in a folder and figure out how to name the render so it was what is picked to show.

Or - do a render of each item - name it with the item file name - and keep them in a card catalog type folder and do a slide show of the pix, stop on one you want and do a FIND using the render name.

Quote - For that - finding in storage - I am thinking that ya need to figure out how you categorize an item - reproducably.  It needs to be filed in a way that two years from now, Ya still think of it the same way.  Finding something you know you have, is one thing.  Finding something that you forgot you have, or just bought on a whim, browsing the stacks, as it were,  Ya need to take time a figure out how YOU think.

When I store my purchases and downloads, I categorize them EXACTLY the same way I do in my runtimes. So I can find the original file very easily.

For those things I haven't yet installed, I also categorize them right away, after download. The installed content is in a subfolder of its category called -- with great originality -- "INSTALLED".

Sometimes, I do wonder whether I categorized something as "Gothic" or as "Fantasy" or whatever because many items could potentially fit a number of different categories. But I still have a good idea of where to look. And as quoted above -- you do need to figure out your own criteria for each category before you start.

I could autogenerate a text list of all the assets in each folder, if I wanted. This would be easier to search than the files themselves, I suppose.

As Jaager says, putting things that are add-ons and related products together in a folder is a key. And, of course, you can always rename the folders, the files, and even the original downloads.