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You can.
Now any time you uninstall anything, you won't have to download it again, it'll show up in your Ready To Install tab, using your backup location.
Oh, and I failed to mention in the video that, in the Installed tab where all of the installed content is listed, hovering over the product will show which path it's installed to - which is very handy. Sometimes when I'm installing a LOT of things at once I may accidentally install something into the wrong directory.
So I find the missing product in DIM's Installed tab, verify its location. If I did indeed make a mistake installing it, I simply uninstall it, select the correct path from the drop-down, and install it again. Done - and done Very Very Quickly!
This was Crazy Me 10 years ago when DIM was first introduced.
Negativity Galore in the forums, I decided to have a look for myself. I wasn't good at doing screen capture videos, as you can plainly see, but I pulled up my courage and opted to show the world what DIM was all about in my own limited understanding at the time. You can see by the web pages how new it was at the time. Not to mention my horrible animations! LOL
I had (and still have) a lot of power line noise and I tried to cover it up. Funny.
DIM 10 years ago. Love at first sight!
It isn't really "auto open" - you stil have to tell it to do the opening. DIM does have an equivalent now http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/install_manager/change_log_1_4_1_22
The ONLY reason I still use DIM is because without it I don't know what's been updated.
I never realized how much I absolutely loathe having to install everything manually until I started using DIM.
Before I actually used it, I was kind of okay with the fact that without it I could still install manually using the downloaded zip files instead of the installers we used to get. Same as installing from other marketplaces.
The first time I fired up DIM and started installing batch queues... it was night and day Game Changer!!! I've been hooked ever since.
To AllenArt's point, back when I first finally tried it, I really had to. Genesis 1 was going through changes as they worked out compatibility with Carrara and I believe DSON for Poser. Simply copying new files over the existing folders didn't work. Genesis was getting borked and the forums lit up like Christmas trees.
Completely obliterating my Daz Library directory and starting over using DIM not only fixed it, it has shown me that this is a Much better way!
I can't even imagine installing the bulk of Daz holdings manually. I have enough freebies and a few things from the other store to have had a taste of it.
Your missing the entire reasoning for my suggestion. I want DIM to allow a secondary INSTALLATION of the current product being installed. I don't ever save my downloads as it just takes up too much room on the drives and I see no reason to try to locate a specific ZIP if I need one. WHY? Because DAZ put a bunch of numbers and what not in front of each zip so you can't even organize them by alphabetical order. So you can remove those. Then it becomes more of an annoying task to do that for every item bought. No thank you. Having an an option for DIM to install the product twice is more elegant and time saving.
Wouldn't it take less space if you just set your DIM downloads folder to D:, instead of having a whole uncompressed duplicate content folder on D:?
Not really because then your back to square one with having to reinstall all by hand. Not sure why this is a debate and why folks can't see that an elegant solution doesn't need debating.
But it wouldn't do anything useful, having everything isntalled twice would open the route to potential confusion. And why would putting the downloads on D: require manual anything? if you place them there DIM will show them in the ready To Install tab anytime you have the product uninstalled, reinstall as needed/desired. Or use a mirror tool to synchronise your actual isntalaltion to D: without connecting it to DS - which would also back-up any changes you make.
I fail to see the point. You've got two matching installations; studio only using one. Something 'breaks', gets corrupted, overwriiten - whatever. Now what? Switch to the alternate installation? This only works once - and the second installation set has corruption at this point. Do you want studio to save anything you create to both sets? If not, they no longer match.
Plugins only install to subdirectories of the studio executable directory, and DIM only supports two of these - the release version and the beta version of studio.
My current download directory takes up 2.37 TB for 37,320 files; it took Windows less than a minute to tell me that. My primary studio content directory takes up 1.7 TB for 2,909,727 files and 564,275 folders; it took Windows close to 10 minutes to run this count on an SSD - and I have three other content directories on other drives.
If I need to find a particular download file, I go into DIM and filter on the name; from this I can get the sku which is the prefix used on the download files.
And - it takes far less time to make a backup copy of the download directory than it does to make a backup copy of the content directory.
If your not intelligent enough to keep track of what drive you want as a back up drive and the drive you use to plug into DS then maybe that kind of person has no business using DAZ Studio. That was sort of off color statement Richard. Just saying. I guess folks like things hard and nearly impossible. I'll leave this conversation since there are only a few of us that think this is a good idea while the rest of you folks can keep making the rest of struggle by downplaying a good idea. Cheers
That's really odd thinking. Saving the installation zips takes up a LOT less storage space and is quickly and easily accesible if a backup is truly needed.
I install every thing I want to the drive I connect to Daz Studio, then I back up the drive to another external drive that I disconnect and keep in a drawer ;).
This may be a dumb question, but can Daz Central still be used just to display the icons for Installed products? I understand that it can't be used for downloading and installing, but it displays icons for the products that are much larger and easier to see that the new DIM does. Especially for those of us with less than perfect eyesight. So if I use DIM for download and install of products going forward, can I use Daz Central to view what content I have?
Apparently not. It does not operate offline. So once it's no longer supported there will be no icon view.
That is too bad. Obviously Daz wasn't thinking about folks with less than perfect vision.
Therea re the pop-up tooltips, if you download the thumbnails - right-click menu
I went all this time without them, but... what the heck. See if the thumbnails improve my already happy experience.
FYI = we can set the max thumbnail size in Advanced settings. Not sure how large it'll let us go - I just left mine at default.
Huh... Very cool indeed! Just made my wonderful content database illustrated! I'm a fan!
Good point, i'd suggest adding such a feature to DIM (optional or not). (Text-to-speech compatibility also could be a thing, though that'd be audio instead of visuals then.)
I wish Windows would always keep a drive with the same letter even when you plug it into different ports.
Well, we can change the letters. Right-click Start > Disk Management
Hmmm, suffering a few days of really missing DAZ Central.
DIM is definitely harder to get a quick overview from, which is probably going to be the biggest thing to get used to. I notice that ready to download items don't list purchase dates, which I always appreciate seeing when I install stuff. Yes, you get bigger thumbnails and order dates when you hover over each item, but that's an extra step and slow. The interface is definitely less intuitive.
Otherwise I'm trying to get used to it. Sigh. Does DIM retrieve thumbnails itself for new items, or do we really have to choose to retrieve them everytime we download new stuff?
I've already got DS 4.22 installed. Is there a way to download the package again through DIM to keep as a backup?
Is this why I can't open daz central? It would be nice if at least there were a banner explaining.
Yep, finally died on or about Nov. 20. I used it as long as I could.
I've been using DIM now for a little while. Please, please, please, I beg that you bring back DazCentral.
DIM is CONSIDERABLY slower than Central ever was (for me). The lack of large thumbnails in the list (pop-up doesn't count, because that's not as quick to check and I'd still have to remember things by name. I cannot make out the tiny thumbnails AT ALL) is really starting to get me down. It's so much harder to figure out what I have. I purchased a lot of things in the Black Friday sales, but it's been so slow trying to retrieve all the thumbnails (because DIM somehow doesn't have the ability to automatically load them, whereas Central did) and then installing seems to be taking longer too (that could just be me being biased here). I managed to accidentally update Daz to 4.22 via DIM, which thankfully didn't cause any issues but I do now get lovely sales pitches when trying to make a new scene. DIM also signs me out every time I close it (Remember Me is definitely ticked), and I still hate the dated interface.
This might sound strange, but it's also been a bit sad not being able to show off all my swanky new purchases. Before, I would excitedly go share a screenshot of DazCentral to my friends, like "hey! Look at all this neat stuff! What do you think I should make?", and that was really fun. I got some great ideas for new art doing that. I can't do that now so I'm not inadvertantly promoting Daz assets, and it's absolutely tanked my desire to just make random art using random things I see in my files list. The Smart Content thing being broken too is just adding to my let-down.
I really tried to get into DIM with an open mind despite all the jank. People here were kind enough to help me figure out some of my problems with DIM, but after using it for a bit I have to say it's just... an inferior bit of software (to me!). I don't understand why we can't have both options, but perhaps that's me not being techy enough to know how much work goes into maintaining both. :( Rant over. :(
I admit, I preferred Central too. It looked a heck of a lot more polished. I've used Daz Studio a long time, and the DIM reminds me of the early days when you'd pray that the internet with it's noisy modem would stay connected long enough to DL a 3MB figure.
Also I installed everything through Central, now DIM reckons I have nothing installed >:C
And I hope it's not installing into Poser content folder. But it looks like it would.
AND Central was better for visualising products. I have a LOT of products.