{"id":24594,"date":"2026-05-13T16:12:40","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T16:12:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/?p=24594"},"modified":"2026-05-14T19:19:34","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T19:19:34","slug":"review-wincatalog-2026-an-ai-replacement-for-pzdb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/2026\/05\/13\/review-wincatalog-2026-an-ai-replacement-for-pzdb\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: WinCatalog 2026 – an AI replacement for PzDB?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve long wanted a replacement for PzDB, which was an excellent go-to runtime cataloguer and library replacement for Poser and (to an extent) also for DAZ Studio content. It’s now defunct. I’ve now discovered WinCatalog 2026<\/a>, which initially looked promising. It’s just this month added AI search. I had a look at it.<\/p>\n

On loading it presents a very similar user-interface to PzDB, which was a nice start. It looks much like Microsoft Access, which PzDB was built on. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Fairly straightforward and easy to use, though there is a very full online 2026 manual<\/a> if you need it (and a PDF manual for the 2024 version<\/a>).<\/p>\n

It took a couple of hours to make the initial local index of my DAZ ‘content’ folder, which has the main runtime below it, and then longer to add my larger Poser runtime. The new index is stored on the main SSD and its embeds its own thumbnails. This results in an 8Gb combo database when indexing my Poser and DAZ runtimes. You can’t search two separate databases at once, only one, so you need to have both DAZ and Poser indexed in one. Searches are slow on such a large database, but the speed is bearable. <\/p>\n

It doesn’t compare with the speed of the free Everything software, though, which is lightning quick and comparable to the incredibly quick Poser 2014 Adobe AIR library.<\/p>\n

Sadly there is no equivalent in WinCatalog of the free Anything software’s vital Search ‘Match Path’ function. Here’s Everything doing ‘match path’ for chull *png …<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And here’s WinCatalog doing the same search (no ‘match path’)…<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

No contest.<\/p>\n

Why is Everything better? Because Everything can find .PNG thumbnails even if they are not named with the search term. e.g. Chull expression .PNGs are shown, even though they are not named chull<\/em> and are only in a folder which has chull<\/em> in its path. The apparent lack of this vital path-searching feature<\/strong> limits WinCatalog. I’ve looked all over its manual for such a thing, and I can’t find it.<\/p>\n

One can at least have WinCatalog sort results by ‘date created’ which means your installed items and their extras are clustered together in the results. Which is useful, but again Everything can do that. I’m assuming here that nothing has monkeyed about with the time-stamps on your runtime files, perhaps during a long-ago move to a new PC.<\/p>\n

Like the Everything software, drag-and-drop into DAZ and Poser is not supported. In the old PzDB the thumbnail and the file were one and the same, and you just saw the thumbnails. And then you could drag-and-drop your selection onto the Poser\/DAZ stage and it would load or load\/conform. That’s not the case here. It’s a big drawback, but not insurmountable. You just have to right-click and view the .PNG file in Explorer, and then 99.9% of the time the target file will be sitting next to it with the same name and datestamp.<\/p>\n

You do get Boolean search with exclude in WinCatalog. For example, pitterbill *.png -glove<\/em> will exclude the Pitterbill character’s gloves, a feature which doesn’t work in the same simple way in Everything (perhaps you can dive into its Regex to do that, though).<\/p>\n

Thumbnail quality is fine. Some long-time Poser users will first need to run the freeware RSR-to-PNG-converter<\/a> on their runtimes. Load | then point at your ..\/runtime (not your ..\/content); select \u2018recursive\u2019 | let it run (there\u2019s no indication it\u2019s running) for about 30 minutes on a first pass of a huge runtime. Doing this ensures there are .PNG thumbnails for older Poser content, if not already present. WinCatalog can’t make its own thumbnails if there are none already present.<\/p>\n

Font size can be changed. Search-result thumbnail size can be changed up or down. There’s no dark mode.<\/p>\n

To make the database lighter in weight, the best option seems to be to stop the indexing shortly after starting, delete all the textures and shader preset subfolders (and any other unwanted folders) from the database index, and then continue indexing. Databases can also be compressed after building, and there are scheduled timestamped backups.<\/p>\n

Individual files and folders can have user comments added, or can be rather clunkily tagged. Export of search results to .HTML pages is possible. None of that can be done in Anything.<\/p>\n

WinCatalog’s clunky tagging process is being sidestepped in the very latest WinCatalog 2026.1.0.415 version, which has just introduced offline AI (if you want it). An interesting development, and I’ve not yet tested it. Once WinCatalog has built its local database, the in-database thumbnails can also all be auto-described by any local AI model with Vision enabled. You supply the AI, and can plug in its local URL. Qwen3.5 4B with its Vision MMPROJ file loaded would likely be a good quick choice, but I could not get WinCatalog to connect to it when running Qwen on Llama.cpp in Jan.ai. Generating the auto-descriptions might take a while though, for huge runtimes with zillions of thumbnails. The AI descriptions are then added to the database, and can be searched across using natural language. That is of course of no help with getting the DAZ \/ Renderosity store preview or store URL into the database. For that you would need to manually comment individual databased items. Not fun.<\/p>\n

Interestingly WinCatalog can generate thumbnails for 3D files, but by default this is limited to the lightweight .STL and .3MF formats. My guess is it would likely be impossibly slow if you added .OBJ files for a vast Poser\/DAZ\/Vue runtime. But you may find it useful for a smaller collection with lighter meshes.<\/p>\n

The WinCatalog 2026 price is comparable with the old defunct PzDB, currently at \u00a332 with a 20% discount. It is said to work on Windows XP SP3(!) and higher, all the way to Windows 11. The Professional licence only gives you technical support if needed, and .CSV export, otherwise the software is the same. Ideally you want Microsoft’s .NET Framework 4.8 installed, but it’s not an absolute requirement.<\/p>\n

Overall, WinCatalog is an interesting discovery… with a fresh AI cherry on top. The Everything software is however free, and if set up right it’s of far more use most people’s quick Poser\/DAZ search, because it has that vital ‘Match Path’ function (and also complex Regex queries, if you can coax Grok to craft them for you). The decision to spend \u00a326 on WinCatalog 2026 will depend on how much you want its: <\/p>\n

– 3D model indexing with thumbnails;
\n– Boolean search and (rather clunky) sub-folder filtering;
\n– basic manual tagging and commenting (e.g. tag with keyword, add the store URL);
\n– multiple tabbed searches;
\n– export of results to .HTML page catalogs;
\n– the new AI addition (may require the slow LM Studio, ugh);
\n– scheduled and timestamped backups;
\n– software that will run on older Windows PCs. <\/p>\n

Neither software has direct drag-and-drop of search results to Poser\/DAZ. Ideally we still need something with that feature, and that knows about the Poser \/ DAZ categories of people, hair, props, materials etc. Everything is still being developed, and is currently in 1.5 alpha 5<\/a> with lots of new features, so there’s still hope there that there might be some way to have it better adapted for Poser\/DAZ runtimes. 1.5 alpha also has a dark mode and lots of security updates. Update: Everything 1.5 alpha (April 2026) adds drag-and-drop to Poser and DAZ, tagging, Boolean, and more.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve long wanted a replacement for PzDB, which was an excellent go-to runtime cataloguer and library replacement for Poser and (to an extent) also for DAZ Studio content. It’s now defunct. I’ve now discovered WinCatalog 2026, which initially looked promising. It’s just this month added AI search. I had a look at it. On loading […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,9,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-companion-software","category-freebies","category-poser"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24594"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24626,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24594\/revisions\/24626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}