DevonThink is a pro-level tool. It’s difficult to just jump in without reading any documentation and start using it right away.
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Sharpen the saw.
Woman passes a man in the woods sawing down a tree. On her way home that evening, the same man is still sawing on the tree. She asks, “Have you tried sharpening the saw?” The man replies, “I don’t have time to sharpen the saw - I need to cut this tree down.”
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(grin) The reality of using DT as it relates to “difficult to get into” was far different for me than what seems to be the popular thinking here. I have been using it since 2013. I have been in strategic marketing, patent research, software and hardware engineering. I have used DT in all these roles and found myself hugely enabled by it. I’d say, a product marketeer cannot do without DT (and also DevonAgent) - it is the best way to gobble up all ones internal info stream as well as keeping tabs on the competition. As a patent reviewer and innovation agent inside the company, DT allows for very quick comparison between state of the art and new ideas, patent landscape mapping, tracability on important patent dates etc. As an engineer, I have used DT to index huge code bases to search with DT’s boolean logic to find important bits quickly and easily. I can go on…
If you can bring structure to normal office paper stream, acedemia info stream, news gathering externally … you name it, you can bring structure to DT also.
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If you can share, I’d like to know how you generally decide where to divide your databases?
By project? Research area? Etc.
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In general by domain/research area. Projects come and go but domains stay. E.g., at first I started a single db with all I ever thought important for the company in there. That turned into a mess quickly but it did show where I wanted my dividing lines to be. Refactoring is part of engineering life so I split it all up into ‘products’ and ‘technology’ and later on split it up some more into technology papers/research and patents and the products db became products and competition. Each of these databases naturally formed differently but each time how to carve out the specific domains became clear when working with the data first.
Now my role is much more engineering and I have a database solely dedicated to electronic components (specifications, app notes, white papers, guides, some emails and snippets from forums). The grouping in the database is a taxonomy of electronic components, the tags are organized towards supplier names, technology used, type of info etc. So it is extremely easy to drill into say “ADCs” by “texas instruments”, “datasheet”.
I have another database on machine learning and AI, just a wide collection of papers. With the grouping taxonomy (somewhat) setup along the ML technologies. Another database that indexes the source code of an embedded operating system I am using - allows me to find just about anything much more quickly than with native IDE. I have a patent database with a) ongoing matters and b) existing patents. Patents grouping taxonomy by technology, tags are setup by patent author/company and priority date. Using the auto classify feature from DT I can quickly file new found patents. Additionally, this works so well that if engineers approach me with a patent idea, I ask them to write up a good half page (preferably whole page) and use the classify function to see in which category it falls and what the existing/relevant art is it potentially competes with or builds on.
It is perhaps easy to theorize and over think the ideal DB structure too much. I’d say just start with a rough idea and dont be affraid (too lazy) to redo it once you start to see what works/doesn’t work.
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I appreciate your detailed answer!
I have mine split along broad lines: school, not school, zettelkasten. I also have home, projects, and TA, but these last three seem kind of unnatural.
It may be time for me to do some housekeeping.
Anyway, it’s always nice to see how other people arrange things. Thanks again.
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I split mine along my Areas of Focus in GTD: Work, Personal, Exams, etc… and then I have some specialized ones for my research activities at work. These contain thousands of PDFs and LaTeX documents.
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Thanks all for responding, I would encourage people if they haven’t already to take a look at the DevonThink forums. They’re extensive and were just changed over to Discourse forums which are the same that these MPU forums use!
Admittedly I need to take a look at my DevonThink workflow and what databases I have. I think I could definitely use some more databases to aid in the organization of my work and personal life. That’s something for another time though and post.
Excited for the new version and I’ll be using the beta or version soon, most likely when I get a bit of a break from work.
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I previously have had large databases , Home, Work etc. However I am trialling using smaller databases with DT 3
Why? and What’s Big vs Small?
I have a teaching database for all my materials and I like to be able to search amongst and between them… Can DT 3 work Between databases?
My Database is indexed from DropBox, It’s 14.7 GB.
I need to be able access my stuff from different computers (not on a daily basis, but at least every month or so) and I share files with students and colleagues - THat’s why I index. Is there a better way?
Thanks all!
“Size” in terms of DEVONthink databases is multifaceted. As the DEVONtech folks have pointed out, the “size” that really matters for performance is the database’s word count, not necessarily the size on the disk. A database with a single 15gb zip archive (zero words) will likely perform a lot better than a 15gb database with 500,000,000 words. Same size on disk, but likely very different in terms of performance!
You can search across databases with one search query. DT3 does that a bit different from DT2. In DT2 you have a big dialog whereby you need to select your DB to search or select ‘Databases’ for all. In DT3 the default is ‘all databases’ and it searches live. The search function is built-in the main UI (no more seperate dialog) and has a pretty good working ‘score’ for each result. Searches are fairly quick.
But as @Jonathan_Davis mentioned; visit the devontechnologies forum for in depth Q/A.
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Thanks for the feedback. Yes, I’ve seen this on the DT forums.
Mine are split according to whether I want the data on my portable devices or not.
Oogie_Notebook and LambTracker_Queries goes with me everywhere
Reference_File_Cabinet, Android_Development, Mail_Archive_Curated and File_Cabinet_Index stays on main iMac and Mac Air
Within Oogie_Notebook I have 1 layer of top level folders of Active Projects, Equipment and Software, GTD Info and Reference. Within those are the folders by project, piece of equipment or subject that contain the actual notes, documents etc.
The other databases have a single layer of folders.
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I’ve spent some time with dt3 now, and just searching for the text I need seems to work. I still need to learn more about metadata strategies, workflows for importing documents automatically and so on. Sounds like that ebook will be handy when that comes. Anyone know of any good resources until then? Video guides would be perfect.
What do you teach? Do you use your Mac at work? I’m debating between indexing or not as many of my files are created on my work computer (Windows) but I’d like to have a copy/backup on my Mac.
This is exciting to read. I need to dig into this, because automation functionality would make this a great upgrade for me.
joe kissell wrote a book about it.
I teach science - Mostly at the HS Level, Biology and Biomedical Science. I index because for some of my teaching assignments I am at various college campuses, and although I usually have my computer, sometimes its just easier to use the one that is attached to the podium! I use Drop Box for that. Otherwise, I would import… but it seems some of my frustrations with indexing in the past are foxed or improved in DT3… I am liking it so far !
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