I imagine everything in one folder would be a nightmare to find something that you want to use? Unless you're keywording everything and using something like Connector for assets?
I assume he's just talking about his current project, and that his main assets stay in the library and are copied/re-pathed.
Just wondering if anyone puts all their Tex maps in to a single folder and path max to that? We seem to have loads of paths and folders for various texture / model categories and wondered if this is slowing scene loading / render parsing that could be helped by throwing everything in to one folder?
Why not test it, it would take a few seconds to copy/re-path and then check your speeds. Everyone has different network setups/speeds, if you find it works for you then that could be part of your workflow. I would be interested to see your speed comparisons & hardware details.
FYI from my background, every studio I worked at had issues with the way they contain/use/path their libraries. These days I find it most simple to just archive each project with their own assets. Sure the archives are larger but there are some benefits to this...
1. If you open the project in future and those assets have moved or renamed or whatever - everything is localized for that project.
2a. This gives you freedom to re-arrange/organize your library how you like on the fly and only current projects will be affected, if you have somewhat of an organized library its easy to use Colin Senner's bitmap relink tool to just reconnect those assets during the project.
2b. Alternatively you can archive as you go and keep everything local to that project and dump what's not used at the end, or however you prefer to organize things at least you still have the option to change the library on the fly without re-pathing. Up to you 2a or 2b.
3. Offsite/Backup hard drives for archived projects aren't too expensive and having a double/triple copy is more than worth it when this is work your bread and butter.