Can I delete files in the Daz Connect system folder?

LaPartita

I was trying to clear space on my computer, and I found over half a gig of .jpg and .json files in the Daz Connect folder within Windows. This is strange, because I have never used Daz Connect - I exclusively use the DIM. Why are these files appearing, and more importantly will it cause problems if I delete them?

Ascania

Have you been logging into D|S?

SofaCitizen

What I have found is that Daz Studio likes to update the CMS database with links to the images in that folder instead of the ones that sit alongside the csx files in Runtime/Support.  So if you do remove those files then you may find that some of your thumbnails become broken. Not figured out the point of the json files tho.

And yes, this is one of the reasons why you should always "Work Offline" in Daz Studio if you use DIM to install products.

LaPartita

I usually work offline, but it's not impossible that I went online for some reason at some point.

As to the rest, I'm not sure. What are "the CMS database" and "D|S"?

SofaCitizen

D|S would be a shortcut way of referring to Daz Studio.

The CMS Database referrs to the "Content Management System" which is a database that runs on PostgreSQL. It contains data about your installed products which allows the searching and categorisation to work much faster than if Daz Studio had to go through and read all the installed files every time. One of the things it records is the path to a product's main thumbnail. DIM will set this to the file that sits in /Runtime/Support but if you allow Daz Studio to connect to the servers it will download an aditional thumbnail, put it in that folder you found (along with the JSON file) and update the CMS database to specify that this is the true thumbnail to use.

If you check the date modified on those JSON and image files it should give you a hint as to when your copy of Daz Studio last connected to the servers.

If you exclusively use DIM to install purchases (as I do also) then AFAIK you should never login on the Daz Studio application itself since it will override and somewhat break things that DIM has done.

If you do/did delete those files and are indeed missing thumbnail images then it might be possible to fix them by going to the installed list in DIM, checking the box next to the products and selecting Re-install Metadata -> All Selected. However, I have not checked to see if that does resolve that particular issue. A full re-install of the product should definitely do it but that would suck if you don't keep the downloaded packages on your hard-drive.