Tagging Models and Files
You can assign Tags to, or tag, your models and auxiliary data files to help you with organizing them in the database. You can even assign tags to the tags themselves, thereby getting a tree structure of tags — see The Tag Tree. In this regard, tags may remind you of folders on the file system. But tags go beyond that:
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You can find models and files by searching on their assigned tags. You can even find such items by searching on ancestor tags — that is, tags assigned to the item’s tags themselves. For example, if you create a tag Interpolation Functions and add it under the tag Project A, you may tag auxiliary data files by the former and then find them by searching on the latter.
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You can assign multiple tags to a model, file, or even to a tag itself.
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The tag assignments are version controlled independently. A new commit is saved on the branch when you add or remove assigned tags to an item — see Adding and Removing Tags. This has the benefit that:
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You can track changes to the assigned tags of items over time, giving you an organizational history. Perhaps you introduce tags for different stages in your modeling workflow, say In Progress, To Review, Approved, and Needs More Work.
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You can revert any changed tag assignments from The Revert Window.
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You can search items based on their tag assignments at a particular time by Searching in Snapshots and Commits. Perhaps you want to find all items that had a particular tag, say In Progress, a month ago, or merely see what the tag tree looked like. When Searching in Branches, you search the present tag assignments.
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The settings for tags are version controlled. If you change the title of a tag and click Save () in the Settings window, a new version of the tag is created. Any tag assignments involving the saved tag will, however, be left unchanged.
Creating New Tags
Click New Tag () in the Database section of the Home toolbar to open the New Tag dialog box. The Location field shows the database, repository, and branch that the new tag will be created in.
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Write the title for the new tag in the Title field.
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Under Tags, select the parent tags from The Tag Tree that will be assigned to the new tag. Leaving all nodes in the tree cleared will create the new tag under the root. The tree is empty when you create your first tag.
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In the Comments field, write an optional comment for the associated commit.
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Click OK to save the first version of the new tag in the database.
If a tag version is selected in The Databases Tree or The Model Manager Window when you click New Tag (), that tag will also be initially selected in the tree in the New Tag dialog box.
You can see your new tag under the branch node in The Databases Tree if you have selected Items when clicking Show () in the Databases windows toolbar. You can also see it in the tag tree in the Tags section in the Settings window for an item.
You will not be able to see the new tag in The Model Manager Window until you assign your tag to a model or file, and that model or file is returned in a search result.
The Tag Tree
Since tags can be assigned to other tags, items in a Model Manager database can be represented as nodes in a tree structure. Items assigned a particular tag appear as child nodes to the tag node. You can find a particular item in multiple positions in the tree as items can be assigned more than one tag. You may think of items not assigned any tags at all as placed under a hidden root tag. In The Databases Tree, these items appear as children under the nodes of Branches and Snapshots.
To help you with identifying the regular model that a draft originated from, the draft node is placed as a child node to the regular model node in the tag tree, whenever both the model and draft share the same assigned tag. See also Save Types.
Assigning Tags to Items
To assign tags to an item, do one of the following:
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Select tags in the Tags section in the Settings window of Models, Files, or Tags, and click Save ().
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Right-click an item and select Tags () to assign tags via the Tags dialog box — see also Adding and Removing Tags.
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Select to import folders as tags when bulk importing files from the file system — see Importing Files.
All three options create a commit. The first and last option also save a new version of the item. The middle option does not.