Here's an issue I had and have in both 2007 and 2008 versions of SW: occasionally I will attempt to open an assembly (both through the SW menu and by double-clicking in Explorer), and all the parts will be missing (greyed out). I keep assemblies and parts in the same directory, don't mess around with file names or locations in Windows, and have "Search file locations" turned on in External References, though that shouldn't matter.

If I open the drawing of an assembly with this issue, I get the Xed-out boxes. If I open all the parts (sometimes there are a lot...), then the assembly will load. If I attempt to check the References button in the Open window, I get an error claiming that the assembly file must not have been saved in the current version of SW. This is, of course, silly. I saved it the day before.

The "File not found" error does not come up, and I am not given the option to hunt for the "missing" parts manually.

This is inconsistent. It happened this morning, and after searching fruitlessly here for an answer, I tried again, and the file opened up with no problems. I suspected it may be network speed related (I work off a server), but my coworkers don't have the same problem. Is there any way to tell SW to "look harder" for files before giving up?

Also, Hi! I'm Dave, I'm an engineer, work on garden tools, and have been using SolidWorks for 4 years. My first port on the forums.

Any guesses? Thanks in advance...

Dave