Greetings,
I'm a beginning SolidWorks user. It is my understanding thatincluding a revision letter or number in the file names ofSolidWorks parts, assemblies, and drawings utterly defeats the filemanagement capability of the PDMWorks vault. One of mycoworkers just made some changes to an existing part and saved itwith a new file name that incremented the revision letter from A toB. He couldn't understand why the changes he just made werenot updated in the drawing. I explained to him that hisdrawing was still linked to the part with the revision A filename.
After persuading this coworker not to include revision letters infile names, he sent some files to our machine shop, who promptlyhowled that there were no revision letters in the file names. Apparently the software used by our machine shop will notoverwrite an old file with a newer one if the file names areidentical. Most of our machine shop's customer use SolidWorksand include revision letters in the names of the part and drawingfiles. Hawk Ridge Systems suggested creating copies ofdeliverable vault files and appending the revision information tothe file name before sending them out. What's going on here? Are you folks including revision letters in your SolidWorksfile names and not using the vault? Or are you appendingrevision information to file names only when they are sent outsidethe company?
Thank you, Jeff Philips
I'm a beginning SolidWorks user. It is my understanding thatincluding a revision letter or number in the file names ofSolidWorks parts, assemblies, and drawings utterly defeats the filemanagement capability of the PDMWorks vault. One of mycoworkers just made some changes to an existing part and saved itwith a new file name that incremented the revision letter from A toB. He couldn't understand why the changes he just made werenot updated in the drawing. I explained to him that hisdrawing was still linked to the part with the revision A filename.
After persuading this coworker not to include revision letters infile names, he sent some files to our machine shop, who promptlyhowled that there were no revision letters in the file names. Apparently the software used by our machine shop will notoverwrite an old file with a newer one if the file names areidentical. Most of our machine shop's customer use SolidWorksand include revision letters in the names of the part and drawingfiles. Hawk Ridge Systems suggested creating copies ofdeliverable vault files and appending the revision information tothe file name before sending them out. What's going on here? Are you folks including revision letters in your SolidWorksfile names and not using the vault? Or are you appendingrevision information to file names only when they are sent outsidethe company?
Thank you, Jeff Philips
I never ever append Solidworks filenames with Revision info this would be a "where used" & "file reference" nightmare. I use the Revision Block in the Drawing to control rev level and a revision property in parts and assemblies.
Creating copies and apending the file name can also cause file reference problems. You could use Pack and Go to consolidate files to zip folders and name the zip folders with the rev level. This would assist vendors in file managment without altering your file naming and file references.