Solidworks file management best practices

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All rights reserved. Preventive File Management Preventive file management on your hard disk can avoid future problems in both the software and hardware areas. The journal file regularly records numerous processes. For example, when you rotate a model, the rotation increments are recorded to the journal file. If the journal file is located on a network drive, you are subject to variances in network performance such as other traffic. Locate the auto recover files on your hard drive. Auto recover information is one of the options you can set in Backups.

The auto recover files include information required to recover from a system failure. Auto recover is independent from maintaining backup copies of your documents. Options for both capabilities are set in the same location. Parent topic Troubleshooting.

Troubleshooting Resources. Status Feedback. Hardware Issues and Recommendations. Graphics Adapters and Drivers. No matter what I say here, people are going to disagree with me. My recommendations here will tend toward the conservative. These two claims may be related in many cases. I personally think that the only excuse for avoiding these things are fear and ignorance.

Third, the SolidWorks file management world is deterministic. Nothing supernatural ever happens to your data.

It definitely follows certain rules. You can in many cases fix file management mistakes, although it may require some creativity at times.

This is Chapter 3, entitled Preparing Document Management. In fact, you could mostly use the same rules for Solid Edge. Tools like Fusion and Onshape will be drastically different, however. It looks like you can get used paperback version, but some people are gouging for them. Amazon Link.

I have to say that the comments on the Administration book actually made me feel good that I had written that book. People on the internet are so often just interested in trying to look smart by tearing other people down, but these comments made me realize that the book was probably worth writing, and that there are some people left who know how to express positive feelings. Thanks to those folks.

I know Mark Landsaat in particular comes around here from time to time. Really, thanks. The interrelationships between part, assembly and drawing documents in SolidWorks need to be managed more carefully than just a system of flat files.

SolidWorks and all 3D parametric modelers have some special needs. If you follow some simple rules, you can manage the files successfully. However, taking a lot of shortcuts in the file management may leave you with a set of disassociated documents if you do not understand and follow the document management rules and handle files according to those rules.

If you or your company is new to SolidWorks, it is important to get your document management process figured out as early as you can. Making changes to an existing will become more painful the more entrenched the system is and the more changes you have to make. You have many important choices before you, and these choices are not easy to change later on if you discover a flaw in your reasoning or execution. You really do have to understand the issues completely right up front and make good decisions right away that you will live with for the life of your document management system.

While that statement may be somewhat overblown, you can actually make changes or adjustments, but changes to a system in use are something you should avoid if at all possible. File naming conventions is a topic that has spawned many quasi-religious arguments. You find strong opinions on all sides of this issue. The main arguments are for or against an intelligent part numbering system where portions of the part number signify options in the product.

My purpose here is not to declare a winner in this feud, but rather to give positive and negative arguments for each side. The issue is complex, and there certainly is no clear correct choice. People who like automatic systems tend to go with the intelligent schemes.

People who like to be absolutely positive that nothing bad will happen go for the sequential system. For the purposes of this book, I want to remain mostly neutral on the question of which technique is the best, because there are valid arguments on both sides.

It might be more accurate to say that instead of remaining neutral, I will actually argue for and against both sides of the issue. I will say that regardless of which system you choose, it is probably prudent to have at least a portion of the part number to be sequential non-intelligent, random , although I have an excellent example of a situation in which that piece of advice was not followed, yet the system is highly successful.

The reason for requiring a section of a number to be sequential is to avoid duplication in a system that could possibly create duplicate part numbers for different parts. I do not dispute that there may be some value in intelligent part numbering, but I also think that any in any intelligent system, unless things are extraordinarily well defined, there is the possibility to duplicate part numbers. The main advantages of intelligent part numbering are that you can always tell exactly what part you are talking about right from the part number, and that parts that are similar will have part numbers that are similar.

Intelligent part numbering appeals to our need for order and our desire to classify things. Intelligent part numbers are often divided into sections, possibly using prefixes or suffixes set off from the main number by dashes or dots. For example, an intelligent part number might look like this:.

The prefix in this case could stand for a document type such as manufacturing drawing, inspection drawing, assembly instructions, or if the part number signifies a part rather than a drawing, it could stand for some classification of the actual part, such as casting, machined part, circuit board, and so on. With intelligent part numbers, you can tell the difference between numbers intended for drawings of the same part that have different functions and the part itself.

The main number can also have significance, and you usually need a key to decipher its meaning. For example, within the prefix say 08 which signifies circuit boards, the first two numbers shown as 12 mean different types of circuit boards, 01 for single layer, 02 for double layer, 03 for ceramic, 04 for FR-4, 06 for flex circuits, and so on. The next three numbers might apply to the project number. Suffixes can be used or not used as needed. In the case of the circuit board example, the suffixes might signify its input or output voltage, types of connectors or other characteristics of significance where options exist.

Examples of significant part numbers are easy to find. If you go to a catalog house, part numbers for many catalog parts are laid out as intelligent part numbers with some sort of an identification key for ordering. Catalogs might have many different intelligent schemes, because a single scheme as shown in Figure 3. An example of a highly successful intelligent part numbering system is automobile tires. In fact, tires have a long established intelligent part numbering system that works across many vendors around the world.

You can go to different tire vendors, give them the part number from a different vendor, and they know exactly what you are talking about. This system has held up for years, and works seemingly flawlessly.

All of the numbers or letters have some sort of significance. Figure 3. Notice also that as successful as it is, this part numbering scheme has at least one glaring error that engineers would never tolerate — mixed units inches for rim diameter and millimeters for width. So intelligent part numbering is really trying to classify the part with the part number. When the system works, it makes identifying parts very easy.

Because intelligent part numbering is really just building a classification system, the success of an intelligent part numbering system depends heavily on the number of items being classified remaining relatively static, and very easy to identify. Another example of an even older intelligent part numbering system is the Dewey Decimal System. In this system, there are ten top level classes, each broken down into dozens of subdivisions. The Cutter numbers are mainly to avoid duplicates in the classification system.

I suppose it is no wonder that students find the Dewey Decimal System such a chore to learn, and industry has not been lining up to copy it. While the Dewey Decimal System is still in use, I consider it to be a good example of what can go wrong with an intelligent numbering system. It leaves a lot open to interpretation such that a book may have two different DDS numbers from different libraries. But it does work. This is a common comment with intelligent numbering systems.

The systems have many faults, but they do work. You must also determine if it is better than the alternative, sequential part numbers, where there is no classification at all other than the order in which numbers were assigned to the items. First, what happens if the company designs a new radiator cap for an automobile that has circuitry built into the injection molded cap. How do you classify this new part? Is it a circuit board, because it uses that design and manufacturing process, or is it an injection molded part, because it also uses that process?

Or what if your company had a classification for inseparable subassembly? It is also that. The big problem here is that depending on what kinds of parts your company has to deal with, you may be in a situation where change is not predictable, and be clear that the one thing that begins to bring this intelligent part numbering system to its knees is change, especially when parts start to cross classifications.

Another disadvantage is that for different types of parts you have to have a different classification system. This means that you do not have only one numbering system, but many.

If you make tires, you may be in luck, but other types of manufacturers are not so lucky. The example of the tires shows that even flawed classification systems can be highly successful, if by success you mean unambiguous and widely used. But the circuit board example shows that not all products are easy to classify, and not all products will see the same sort of success as tires. On the surface of things, sequential part numbers do not seem to have any advantages whatsoever because they do not give you any information unless you happen to remember that particular part number.

Sequential part numbers are usually just the next in line number in a database, or in days gone by they used to come from a log book, and just took out the next number for a new part. It turns out that sequential numbers do have several advantages. The main advantage is that there is no way to get duplicate numbers.

The idea that each item should have a unique identifier is one of the cardinal rules of document management, and it turns out to be one of the rules that fully intelligent part numbering can easily transgress. When people make arguments in favor of sequential part numbers also called non-intelligent numbers , another of the advantages they cite is that there is no data associated with the part number. This is an advantage because you are not duplicating the function of the part number.

Is the part number meant to classify the part or simply identify the part? The data, or significance that would be conveyed through the intelligent number must be attached to the part in some other way. Proponents of sequential numbering claim that the part number is only for identification, and that classification comes through the metadata non geometrical text data attached to the part through a database or in SolidWorks through the custom properties functionality.

If you use sequential part numbers, the bottom line is that you have to have some mechanism for relating the description of the article to the part number.

These database-driven systems always have a way to connect what is called metadata to the part number. This enables text searches to find actual human readable text of the metadata rather than cryptic number strings of the sequential part number.

Obviously, this system does not depend on the types of products a company has to document. You can apply sequential numbers to absolutely anything without restrictions. Intelligent part numbers only work for rather simplified classes of products. This may get a little confusing, so stay with me here. So our fellow takes the BOM and goes out to the warehouse.

The first item on the list is , and it has a description of Transmission Housing Casting. In the warehouse, there is no such part, but when he looks it up on MRP manufacturing resource planning system , Joe finds that is a drawing of the casting, and that there is also a drawing for the casting die, a drawing for the secondary machining operations for the casting, as well as a machining fixture, machining fixture drawing, shipping crate, a shipping crate drawing, a transmission assembly instructions document and a transmission assembly drawing.

Not only does that number bring up all of those things, but it also lists part numbers for physical parts, electronic files for the drawings and the models the drawings were made from. If you are new to document management, this is something you will need to confront at one point or another.

When creating part numbers, you have to be explicit about what that number stands for, physical part, paper drawing or electronic document. What is our warehouse fellow supposed to collect for his BOM list?

An aluminum casting? A paper drawing? An electronic file? If the part number stands for the Transmission Housing Casting, you may or may not want all documents related to that part to have the same number.

A prefix accomplished this task in the circuit board example, but it could also be done with a suffix. This system is a hybrid between a sequential main number and an intelligent suffix. It has broken down the intelligence to a level where it is controllable and useful. This system is also perfectly acceptable, but it does not immediately convey what type of item each part number is. It seems easy to be attracted to the hybrid system. You may think that this is all starting to get rather complicated, because for this one transmission housing, we have several types of items to keep track of.

We have the physical part in a couple of different states of manufacture, several different 2D electronic drawings, and the 3D models. Is it really necessary to keep track of each of these? Yes, it is. You have a manufacturing process, and need to keep track of Work In Progress parts, along with finished parts and completed subassemblies, tested, untested, and so on.

You need to think in part numbers and document numbers, and where the parts are in the manufacturing process. In SolidWorks, when you put a part or an assembly onto a drawing, the drawing inherits the name of the model. In SolidWorks you can have a part named Your document control process, whether manual through folders in a network drive or automated through a PDM system needs to reflect this.

Windows does not allow you to put two files with the same name into the same folder. The case of needing unique file names is the same as needing unique part or document numbers above. If you get away from the idea of intelligent part numbers, then all of these names and numbers are used for the exclusive purpose of identifying the file, part or document.

It makes sense that the part or document number should be used as the file name because the file name has the same purpose as the part number — just to identify the file. I would also recommend using some sort of a prefix or suffix to be able to quickly identify different types of numbers. The discussion about descriptive names versus the more cryptic numerical names for SolidWorks file names often brings up as heated a debate as the sequential versus intelligent part number question.

You probably see a lot of people with this kind of name for their SolidWorks parts, but I want to discourage you from adopting a convention like this for anything but concept design work. If it has to be documented and managed, you should assign a proper name to it. Some people reason that the file name should be human readable text to help you identify the part just by sorting alphabetically and looking for it in Windows Explorer. This seems like a reasonable assertion until you look into the issue a little deeper.

This issue will keep returning as long as you try to use the file name to add information other than a unique identifier for the document.

The case is not yet complete, however. The obvious answer is to use metadata. Metadata includes any sort of descriptive text in any category you might choose that is either kept inside the file as custom property data or associated with the file through a database. In SolidWorks documents this is best done as a custom property. Custom Property data can be searched in Windows Explorer, even if you are doing just manual document management, but it is not as convenient or as powerful as if you are using a true PDM system.

The ultimate answer that this line of questioning is leading to is that for almost any SolidWorks user, whether small or large, documents should be managed in a PDM system.

PDM does not have to be expensive or difficult to install or maintain, but it does answer all the questions raised in this chapter. The way PDM answers all the difficulties is by enforcing unique document names used to uniquely identify documents, and using metadata to describe or categorize the document. Typical metadata custom properties include description, material, finish, supplier, color, customer, voltage, drawn by, approved by, date approved, and so on.

Any way you want to classify the part or document where a property has a value can be used to identify the document through search functionality.

It is more than just convenient, more than just a reasonable replacement for Windows Explorer searches, you will find it far more useful as well.

File Distribution Best Practices. Editing Imported Features. Import Diagnostics Overview. Import Diagnostics PropertyManager.

Exporting Documents and Setting Options. Exporting 3D Print Files. Importing Mesh Files. File Types. Exporting Using Extended Reality. Scan to 3D. Model Display. Mold Design. Motion Studies. Parts and Features. Sheet Metal.