- [Instructor] One of the major benefits of using
SolidWorks PDM professional or standard
is the ability to move SolidWorks data
while maintaining the internal references
that help build assemblies, drawings, and link
external and internal references together in parts.
So, typically in the past using just SolidWork stand-alone
desktop, you'd use the pack and go feature to make sure
that when you are moving a project or replicating a project
you would be able to pull all the parts, assemblies,
drawings, even toolbox components and everything else
that comes with pack and go over to the new location.
With PDM, though, you don't get the ability to manage things
like versions, revisions and you can lose some of those
references if you're not careful.
The better tools to use are Copy and Move Tree.
So, let's take a look at our Windows Explorer
and step through this process for each function.
So, in the drop down here, in Tools, we see Copy
and Move Tree.
So, I'm going to navigate to my assembly that I'm workin' with.
So this is a top level assembly.
First I'm going to go to the tools
and I'm going to go Copy Tree.
So, just like it says this is literally trying
to copy the entire contents of the feature tree
while maintaining the references.
So, you'll notice when it starts up it's giving me all these
warnings, that's because the destination default is
automatically set to the location I'm working in right now,
so I'm going to browse and move that folder location.
So, I've already set up some other folders
where I'd like this to go.
So, I'm going to select that folder.
In this particular instance, I'm going to use the latest
version, I'm going to copy all the files.
I'm not going to include any simulation,
but I am going to include drawings.
I'm going to preserve the paths
and I'm not going to do anything with serial numbers
'cause they don't have any serial numbers.
You'll noticed that we have some of the features here
also that are in pack and go like adding a prefix
or a suffix, replacing certain components.
You also have the ability to change the version
and change destinations for specific things.
So, if you want to separate out all your drawings for example
into various folders instead of where all your models are
you can do that here, you just right click on the drawing,
select Change Destination and maybe we'll move these down
to the Assembly three folder instead.
And if we scroll over we can see where it's found
and where it's going to go, which is the Assembly three folder.
We can also see the states.
Here, we can save out these file lists, open the file list,
show levels, you can see here we still have some warnings
for various parts, so we can sort by warnings
and then go through all of them and see
what's goin' on here.
For these, the files aren't rebuilt 'cause they haven't
been opened lately but that's not a major concern.
You can also check in the copy, so down here below
we have this option to check in the copy, so we can go ahead
and click on that.
Yeah, just going to move this around so we can see the bottom,
there we go.
So you'll see here, we also have the summation
of what we're copying, so the number of assemblies,
number of parts, number of drawings
and any other related files.
So, you can see it's very similar to the pack and go layout.
It will maintain those internal references that PDM
is maintaining for you and we're not even going
into SolidWorks, we're doing this all
in the Windows Explorer interface.
So, I am going to check in this copy.
I'm going to add a comment here that I used Copy Tree
and we are going to go ahead and hit copy.
Let SolidWorks PDM do it's thing.
It's going to start going through and copying
all the files over.
All right, now we've completed that process,
let's navigate through Windows Explorer
and make sure that our files have moved.
So, first thing to check is we still have all the files
that were originally in the Assembly folder located here,
but now we go to the Assembly two folder,
we see a copy of that folder and then all the parts
maintained in here.
Also, if we back up that one file that we moved
to the other folder, ssembly three, the drawing
is located there as we wanted.
So, that's running through the Copy Tree procedure,
let's look at the Move Tree procedure now.
I'm going to go back into my original Assembly folder,
pick that top-level Assembly, go to Tools
and select Move Tree.
Now, instead of copying the tree like it indicates,
it's simply going to move all the files to a new destination.
So, let's say that you're starting a new project
and you're going from a conceptual phase to a fabrication
manufacturing phase, maybe you want to transfer
all these files to a different location in your vault
so other people have access to 'em,
this is one way you can do it.
Again, we're going to include drawings,
preserve relative paths, we're not going to add any prefix,
suffix or replace anything.
We get our count down below.
We're going to navigate to the new folder
where we want it to go, this time we're going to
move it to the Assembly three folder.
We see that we're getting the 236 files like we did before
and we're going to go ahead and click Move.
Now, we wait for SolidWorks to move all the files.
Alright and now we've successfully completed the Move Tree.
Now, you'll notice in our Assembly folder
all of the components are gone now.
We go down to Assembly three, we now see all the components
have moved into a new Assembly folder
in the Assembly three folder.
So, that's how you use the Copy and Move Tree tools in PDM.
They work much better than the pack and go
and you don't even have to go into SolidWorks to use them.