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====== Preset System ======

This Preset system is used by various db&w Plugins.

Using the Presets pop-up you can apply any of your presets, save your current settings as a preset or delete existing presets.
Our plugins have their own system to manage presets. The main reason for developing a custom system was to differentiate between user, global and project (content directory) specific settings.

**user** presets are stored in the same directory where your LightWave3D configuration files are stored, in a subdirectory called “SimplePresets”.

**global** presets are stored in a directory that is accessible to all users on the current machine (and can be mirrored on a server).

On Windows the location is:

  %allusersprofile%\Documents\dbw\LightWavePlugins\

On MacOS it is

  /Library/Preferences/LightWave3D/SimplePresets/
  
**Content** presets are stored in the current content directory.

The system supports the concept of **default** presets. If you name a preset “**default**” then it will be loaded automatically if the plugin is added to a scene.

The plugin searches for **default** presets in the **user**, **global** and **content** presets in exactly that order. This means that a **default** content preset overrides a global default which in turn has precedence over a user preset.

==== Custom directories for presets ====

It is possible to define user directories to store the presets in. This is done by placing a text file called "SimplePresetPaths.cfg" either into:
  * The LightWave/Programs directory
  * The directory where the LW settings are located
  * and/or the content directory.
The files are read in that order, and preset paths defined in an earlier configuration file can be overwritten.
The text file should be formatted as such

  # this is just a comment, anything that starts with a # is ignored
  # first the name of the path as displayed to the user (without spaces)
  # followed by the path
  network \\db-w\lightwave\presets
  local_temp c:\my_temp_presets
  
The path name is not case sensitive, it will be capitalized automatically. It may not contain spaces though.

You can also overwrite the existing default paths by using user, content or global as path names.

The custom directories are shared by all db&w plugins that use this preset system.