Of course there is another way....

You can easily move the location of My Documents library, just right click my documents in the file explorer, then properties, and in one of the tabs you can change location. 

8 minutes ago, Lorby_SI said:

They usually work very well. Nothing to it. These links are a low level functionality of the disk operating system, and Windows uses them all the time.

It is strange because I've run into a minor Disk Space problem due to the "oversized" Package Cache Folder and found it difficult to create a link (!!!Windows 10 HOME!!!) and after I created it (can't remember if it worked with the /j ) but it deleted itself everythime....

20 minutes ago, GEKtheReaper said:

but it deleted itself everythime....

Strange. I have never seen this before. Home edition shouldn't matter, this feature is really low level.

I dimly remember a customer running some kind of backup process that was synchronizing \Documents with the OneDrive (I think). That mechanism created a similar issue, assets kept vanishing because they weren't recognized by the sync.

Best regards

47 minutes ago, GEKtheReaper said:

That's true but how about e.g. FSLabs? It by default wants to go under the "AddOn Folder" and does not create an XML....

Not true.

You can install wherever you want, an add-on.xml file is created in the FSLabs folder and added to the addon.cfg in %programdata%.

3 hours ago, Dave_YVR said:

 You just need to choose where your add-ons get installed and not just hit the "next" button when installing stuff.

Unless they're already installed. :>)

I wish LM would give us an option to let us choose where our 'Prepar3d v5 Add-ons' folder is. I don't want to have to create an additional add-ons folder and then have the add-on.xml file that is usually by default installed in 'Prepar3d v5 Add-ons' point to another add-ons folder. It makes things more complicated than they should be. I rather just use the default add-on folder that gets created by the sim itself, but also allow us to choose where we want to put that folder, instead of installing it to the default location on C:\ drive. Cause some people have use that drive mainly for Windows and other small apps on a small SSD drive with limited space.

Giving us an option to set our own location would be best.

7 hours ago, captain420 said:

Giving us an option to set our own location would be best.

Not really, since this is only one half of the referencing mechanism. This base is already covered by "the other add-ons.cfg".

The "\Documents\Prepar3D Vx Add-ons" folder is for referencing addons that are user account specific, that is why it must be somewhere in your account folder structure. Documents is the user friendly choice, because then you can see that they are there and don't have to hunt for them. The file managing this is the "AppData\Roaming\...\add-ons.cfg"

If you want your addons to be accessible from every user account on your computer (=outside your account folder structure) there are two additional mechanisms. One is using the P3D CLI to add stuff to the sim, and the other is adding discovery paths. The CLI method is for static references, while the discovery paths work like the folder in Documents, but they can be everywhere. The file managing this is the "C:\ProgramData\...\add-ons.cfg" Examples: SODE and Aerosoft usually use the CLI, ORBX chose to use the DiscoveryPaths for their libraries.

Long story short, this option is already there. If you want you own folder, add a discovery path pointing at your desired location. Install your addons there. You can create a DiscoveryPath either by altering the ProgramData..add-ons.cfg (not recommended) or with P4AO, or using the P3D command line interface in a CMD window:

Prepar3D.exe "-Configure: Category=Add-on Discovery Path, Operation=Add, Title=My Autodiscovery, Path=F:\My add-ons"

And to remove it

Prepar3D.exe "-Configure: Category=Add-on Discovery Path, Operation=Remove, Title=My Autodiscovery"

Specification of the command line interface is here:

C:\Program Files\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D v5\Learning Center.chm
Chapter: Software Development Kit -> Add-ons -> AddOn Configuration Files

Edit:
Be mindful though that addon installers potentially don't care about your discovery paths. They will mostly install the referencing add-on.xml into the default folder of your user account (= in Documents\Prepar3D Addons), because they can be reasonably certain that it will be accessible and not cause any file ownership problems. This is why I mostly recommend using the MKLINK method. With this, an installer is none the wiser, it sees the folder in the default location. Which also means that the uninstaller will work too (it won't when you manually move stuff around).

 

Best regards

Edited July 7, 20205 yr by Lorby_SI

I would give some serous consideration to increasing the size of your C drive 128 is low, every time you install something it has to place some in your windows install drive data, and windows reserves some of your C drive that you cannot use and you will get a warning before it`s full.