Daz menu/layout/script backup - Current best practices

paulawp (marahzen)

Every month or so, I have one or more tabs on my Daz screen go missing and I have to re-dock them where I want them, which is a sufficiently annoying, time-consuming nuisance that when this happened last night, I made the mistake of selecting an existing layout that I had saved. It had the tabs I wanted - but despite its name - it also got rid of all but a couple of my scripts. (I believe it replaced the menu with what I had at the time I saved that layout.) The existing customactions.dsx showed the scripts if you open it, but the menu no longer did. While researching this problem quickly in the Daz forums last night - it was late - I saw that numerous people had had similar trouble, sometimes losing the entire Scripts menu itself, for various reasons.

I spent a bunch of time finding out that I had not saved a backup of the Studio4 folder in several months, which I had been doing occasionally for a while once I realized that these things were there. Somehow, my backups also did not include that folder. So no backup of the files since February.

Eventually I figured out that the menu dsx file from my latest backup at least offered a menu with about 3/4 of my scripts so it was a better starting point for re-adding the newest ones, and redoing a reorganization of scripts that I did a month or so ago.

So here's the question: After I re-add and reorganize my Scripts menu items, what is the current best practices for backing up this stuff - and restoring if needed? Going back to the original problem that led to this foot-shooting, I lose tabs often enough, out of the blue for no apparent reason, that I'd like to be able to restore my preferred layout, without hosing my scripts (and if I do, I'd like to be able to do something better than tell myself to have a positive attitude and rebuild them).

 

Richard Haseltine

Window>Workspace>Customise has an Import button at the bottom which can be used to import only one of the types of UI settings. If you use that to import the saved layout it shouldn't touch Toolbars or Menus, just restore the panes. Not the questuion you asked, sorry (I just have Backblaze include the AppData folders), but it should avoid the problem with restoring the full UI from a save.

ShelLuser

In addtion to what Richard said I'd also try to verify why this is happening to you. Because my Daz Studio setup is also heavily customized; completely different activities, custom File menu and my own toolbars. Not to mention all my panes. But I've never had anything gone missing.

Maybe a tip: Window => Workspace => Lock Docking/Undocking (or Ctrl + U). This will prevent any changes to your panes. While you can still undock a pane you won't be able to (accidentally) move them around anymore. Maybe this can help to keep things stable?

paulawp (marahzen)

Thanks for the suggestions.

About the MIA panes, I don't know why this happens. It's often enough to elicit an "oh drat, not again!" response, because getting them to dock where I want them is never as intuitive as I hope it is (I find it convenient to add a couple of panes I use a lot to the left side where the smart content, content library, etc tabs are). But it's not often enough that I've gotten good at fixing it or until now hit this point of deciding that it's time I get a real backup strategy. It does not coincide with any events like a Windows update - which I take pains to minimize on this dedicated art computer - or Daz crashes, which are thankfully very infrequent. I'll just be working and I suddenly notice the two tabs I keep on the bottom of the left side are gone again.

I will look into the suggestion about locking. Once in a while I do accidentally move tabs - almost always on the right side - from clumsy mouse clicks and drags over on that side of the screen.