- (Narrator) In this movie,
let's talk about the different file types
inside of SolidWorks and how to save and modify those parts.
Now, the basic structure for any type
of SolidWorks assembly is you've got one kind
of top level assembly.
And below that you might have maybe a subassembly
or multiple sub assemblies,
which are made up of individual parts.
And you can name them all however you'd like,
and each one of those parts might have its own drawing.
And the assembly itself might have its own drawing as well.
And all of those different drawings
and parts are looking for a path back to that assembly.
So when you open an assembly it's looking for those parts,
and the drawing is looking for that part as well.
So they're all linked together.
So if you just took one of those files
and you moved it somewhere else
and you tried to open it, for instance, the assembly
you could open the assembly, but it'd say,
"Hey, where are these parts that I'm looking for?"
Cuz it's looking for the exact path of where it was.
So it's always a good idea to kind of keep all those parts,
assemblies and drawings together in the same file structure.
The same thing happens if you were to change the name.
So if you were to change the name of one of these parts,
SolidWorks wouldn't know where to find it.
Let me show you how that works.
Let's head over here to SolidWorks.
I'm going to go ahead and open up
an assembly called 1.4.
So that's under exercise files, chapter one, 1.4
Open up the assembly.
And this is a basic assembly made up of three parts.
So I have part one, two and three.
So it's 1.4 dash one, two and three.
All right. Pretty straightforward and simple.
Now let's go ahead and close out of that, right.
Let's go over to our file system.
Right. So now I'm in that folder
and I'm going to change this 1.4 dash three
to a different name.
So I'm going to click on that
and go ahead and rename it dash four.
So pretty simple
and straightforward to do that in Windows Explorer, right?
It's no problem right?
Now I've changed the name.
Now let's go back over to SolidWorks and see what happens.
So I'm here now in SolidWorks.
I'm going to go ahead and open that exact same thing.
So I'm going to click on the home
open that same exact assembly
and now SolidWorks is going, "Hey, where's this file?
I'm looking for 1.4 dash three and I can't find it."
So I need a browse now for that file.
And I could say,
"Hey, now it's actually called 1.4 dash four,"
but that is not really that great of a thing to do.
And if you're only looking for one file
it's not that big a deal,
but what if you're looking for hundreds of files
or maybe even thousands of files?
That can cause a lot of issues.
So I definitely recommend don't use Windows Explorer
to just wildly change names on a whim.
Make sure you think it through,
name the files correctly the first time
and then don't change 'em and don't change the locations
if you can help it.
I'd also recommend using a program like Treehouse
which ships with SolidWorks, or even just Excel.
Excel's great for kind of just laying out all the names
and descriptions of the parts you're going to be creating,
so you can visualize what they're going to be called,
coming up with a logical file naming system
and then typing out all those files ahead of time.
And then if you're working with a team
you can also segregate out the work.
So some people might be working on these series of files
and some people might working on these other series of files
and some people might work on the top level assembly
and everybody knows what the other parts are going to be called
and the top level assembly
and just keeps everything working a lot better.
Let's head back over here to SolidWorks.
Okay. So I want to cancel out of this.
I don't want to make these changes.
I'm going to go ahead and close this, close out of this.
Don't save it, right.
Go back over here to our file system.
Change this back to a different name, dash three.
And now if we go back to SolidWorks
everything should be just fine.
But now for SolidWorks 2020 and beyond
we have a cool new tool that's been added.
Now we used to have this add-in that was
called SolidWorks Explorer, not Windows Explorer
but SolidWorks Explorer used to be the way we
could change these files.
And what it would do, it would look
through the file system and search to see
if there's any references and then update those references.
Now for SolidWorks 2020, that's been updated,
and it's actually right inside of Windows Explorer.
So if you actually right click on this,
notice we get this little icon here that says SolidWorks.
And over here, we have the option to open the file,
do a pack and go, we can rename the file,
replace it, move it, and look for a file location.
So it's all inside of Windows Explorer,
but you have to make sure you're using
or loading in this package when you install SolidWorks
otherwise you won't see it.
So make sure you're looking for the file utilities program
that's included with SolidWorks to get this functionality
and then you can come over here and say
rename and go in here, retype the new name.
It's going to look for where it's being used
and update all the references.