Keeping everything organized

With all the booms, rudders, oars, and other parts, you are starting to get quite a collection of 3D objects here. You need to make sure they are well organized so you can find them in the future. This is what we will look at next.

Everybody organizes their files in different ways, and there are many good ways to do it. What you want to do is organize your files so that you can find them a year from now, when you've forgotten nearly everything about the project on which you are working. Projects that are hot now can be history in 20 minutes, and then come back in six months. You just never know.

A Blender project won't just be the Blender file. It also includes graphics that you have used to make textures and special plugins for Blender, such as the Bolt Factory that automates making bolts, screws, text, and Python language files, as well as the finished files you render. There's a lot to organize.

There are two ways to specify the locations of files...