This may be of some curious interest to some people (like me) or it may be terribly dull and old hat (especially considering P5's debut).

Anyway, after some half-hearted reorganisation of my Hard Disk I decided to try and tackle (another!) reorganisation of my Poser libraries (in prepartion for a new computer coming in the next week or so :).

I know how (technically) you do this (there are other threads on this) but I was wondering (nay, agonising) on the best organisation strategies (examples in abit to clarify).

Obviously there will be a lot of personal preference in this, but I thought it would be useful to get input from other people on how they do it.

Examples: I have my Figures library more or less organised like this:
MM characters
MM clothes - tops {shirts, jumpers, etc.}
MM clothes - bottoms {trousers, skirts, etc.}
MM clothes - feet {shoes etc.}
MM clothes - body {body suits, full body costumes, etc}
MM clothes - coats & cloaks
MM clothes - accessories
etc. and the same for MW, P4M, P4W, with various other misc folders (hair, posable props, etc.).

This is really my best organised libray at the moment and I want to move on to the others(and eventually possibly reorganising figures on the basis of any feedback here ;)

Here's another small example to illustrate my dilema:

Take weapon props. I was thinking of something like;
Weapons - Futuristic
Weapons - Modern
Weapons - Medieval
Weapons - Fantasy

But maybe that's too much? Where do I put bows and crossbows (should they have their own folder)? etc. etc.

Doing it like that may involve more folder scrolling in each library, which is a pain, but then its also a pain scrolling down a huge list of items within a folder (the jury's still out on which is best). And Poses! ye gads, even moving MATs to the camera libray does not seem to keep that tidy or even organised! (I also seem to think I read that you can, technically, move any type to any other library, is this true? How does that work?)

I've heard some people use sub-folders, but I have Pro Pack so I believe this doesn't work. I've also heard some people keep a lot of stuff out of the libraries and only move them in when they need them for a project. Do you do this? How do you manage/organise that, and does that really save time?

So, a lot of questions, but basically one area of discussion:

How do YOU organise and manage your Poser 4 libraries?

Thanks for any input on this.

Read Ya Soon,
                    Steve

Actually, how you organize your folders depends on what you have. I only need one category for weapons, but I have 19 folders for animals in characters. LOL But I use the 'MM' designation too. MMM_ for Michael and MMV_ and MMV2_ and MMKids_ each with several folders. As well as P4M_ and P4F_ etc for the P4 folks and A_ for the animals. All the MAT files I've moved to Cameras. Yes it seems you can put the files almost anywhere as long as you change the extension. Haven't tried it beyond putting the mat files in cameras though. I think the only thing you have to worry about is the 254 or 255 folder limit, as well as the same limit for the number of entries in a folder. PBoost (for sale) swaps out banks of folders for P4. I've also organized my textures in runtime:textures extensively. I may know a texturer by name, but not by company initials, but I try to keep all their stuff in one folder but under major folders for Vicky and Michael etc. HTH

Yes, that's true. I use a lot of weapons, mostly medieval) so it would make sense that I have a number of detailed categories for those. I rarely use animals so they could all be lumped together. And the way I understand it, even with PBooost you'd still benifit from an organised structure to your folders. (And PBooost tester reports that its won't work fully on my system, still, I'll probably try and get the money together anyway :) Yeah, organising textures would be a useful excerise too, but much more involved that with libraries (re-referencing those items that refer to those textures I mean).

Oh shoot. I've gotten enough flak in two threads already for going against the 'conventional wisdom'. But you can organize your textures (I have) and worry about the references later since Poser will still find them as long as they all reside somewhere in runtime:textures. I've been told Poser loads everything faster if the references are all pristine, but it's not like it can't find them or stops working or anything. I've taken total control of my textures, but haven't yet fixed any references. Someday.

Oh shoot. I've gotten enough flak in two threads already for going against the 'conventional wisdom'. But you can organize your textures (I have) and worry about the references later since Poser will still find them as long as they all reside somewhere in runtime:textures. I've been told Poser loads everything faster if the references are all pristine, but it's not like it can't find them or stops working or anything. I've taken total control of my textures, but haven't yet fixed any references. Someday.

LOL. Strange combination of anal organisation and laxness. :) I like it ;)

LOL! Hey... letting poser find all your mis-filed textures isn't a good idea... it takes a long time to load each file, and causes folder-lock problems under XP. It can also cause problems for people who get your products of free-stuff! Try CorrectReference... it'll point all your texture references to whatever texture folder you choose. So you can put your textures wherever you want and hit "go!". H:)

OK. I've posted in another thread thjat I managed to copy all my well organized P4 Runtime Library into P5. So far, no problems whatsoever in P5 finding everything, but the going is slow. Will CorrectReference help speed things up when P5 loads Libraries? Can it work with the compressed versions of the P5 Library files (because that's what I have)?