content disappears from content library

EdwardEdwardEdward

I just purchased the "fantasy book" content from the daz3d site, and downloaded/installed it using the install manager. I then opened DS 4.5, opened my content library, put "book" in the search box, and up came the book, and a lot of other items, including materials for the book. I then did a different search, and of course all of the content from the previous search goes away. So far so good. I then put "book" in the search box again, but this time, no book, and no book materials, come up. Why does a search produce on one occasion, but not on another? Is there a way I can search for "book" and have it appear again?

Thank you for any assistance.

EdwardEdwardEdward

Well, now it works, though I've no idea why. I've seen that before. Sometimes with new content, putting a word in the search box in the content library doesn't find the content, or finds it only sometimes; then after a short time the same word in the search box finds the content consistently.

SpottedKitty

I think that search function depends on the CMS running. Have you ever had problems with the CMS glitching and falling over?

EdwardEdwardEdward

Hi SpottedKitty,

Thank you for your kind reply.

I don't know what a CMS is -- does it stand for content management system? In any event, I don't know if the CMS, whatever it is, has ever glitched and fallen over for me....

I've noticed that some searches using the search box in the Content Library seem to be case-sensitive -- but not when searching for the Fantasy Book. At this point, the book seems to appear whether I put "book" or "Book" in the search box. Yet previously, I would put in "book" and when that failed, "Book," and still nothing would come up.

This is a more general problem -- I'll put in to the search box in the Content Library various words from, and abbreviations of, the title of some content I have, and none of the words or abbreviations will pull up the content. That's simply a royal p.i.t.a, because then one has to try to go find a ReadMe, and the ReadMe's sometimes list 5 or more locations for different aspects of the content (figure, material, pose, etc.), which makes for a chore in going to all those folders and getting to it all -- and that's if there IS a ReadMe for the content -- not always the case -- with the result that sometimes one is forced to go hunting and pecking through a whole pile of content which can take five or ten minutes till one finds what one is looking for.

With every readme file, there should be included a search term that if put into the search box in the Content Library will pull up all the content in that readme -- pull up not just the figure, but the materials, poses, etc., everything in that readme. Every content should have such a search term easily referenced in some online database and elsewhere.

An example of another typical problem: SallyMae hair will not appear if you type "hair" into the search box -- or so I've found. Shouldn't it be a no-brainer that every hair content you have installed will come up if you type "hair" into the search box? "Hair" should also pull up the materials for SallyMae hair. But maybe all this is more difficult to make happen than I understand. Most things are easier said than done. Well, for non-experts like me, of course it's natural that we would wish that DS would make accessibility the biggest priority.

Another problem for easy accessibility is that all the content is organized not into one hierarchy, but two somewhat differently organized ones -- Poser and DS. (No doubt that's more or less unavoidable at present.) Further, one's various purchased contents are classified and distributed to their places in the two hierarchies according to rules that do not always seem quite uniform, predictable, and intuitive. So with these various diversities, the hierarchies sometimes seem like forests more than like hierarchies. That's an exaggeration, but not entirely. That adds to the importance of their being a search term included in the ReadMe of each content, a search term that when put into the search box of the Content Folder will bring up that content without fail.

I've only managed to learn DS to the primitive degree I possess, by dint of perhaps two hundred hours or more of often grueling effort and over 80 posts on this forum asking my dumb questions. And I still feel pretty darn green, though I finally feel I know my way around just a little bit. Still, sometimes -- at least for this relative greenhorn -- working with DS feels like trying to walk through the thickest mud, where your boots get stuck and weigh a ton, because every step is beset either with some new mystery about how the system works, or because, even if you sort of know how to get where you are going, getting the various figures and objects and materials to do what you want seems about as hard and clumsy and slow as it was learning to walk and manipulate objects in the real world when a baby.

Having said all that, DS is still an amazing piece of software and a helluva a lot of fun. And this forum makes it possible for a determined person to solve each problem that comes up, often to solve them very quickly.