I an thinking of upgradint to SW Pro,
Am I correct in thinking that renaming files in the PDM upates links instantly,?
currently renaming files with SW explorer is a painfull task, renaming one file at a time and all the searching for links ect (again, one file at a time)....
will using the PDM solve this problem for me??
Hi, I tried the Pack n Go, but it crashed every time I tried to include the drawings, as there are more that 150 down stream parts and drawings, perhapes I sholud have taken smaller bites, but most of the parts were modeled in the contex of the top level assembly
(however I wont have this bigger problem in the future, as I have now implemented a naming procedure, this assembly was made prior to that, and needed to be updated)
If I am understanding your statement correctly then the answer is yes. You can right click a file in the vault and rename it and once it is checked out and checked back in all the file references will update automatically based upon the new information that PDM has recieved. I am pretty sure you do have to check the file out and then back in once before the refrences will actually be fully updated though . . .
Cheers,
If you use the window explorer in EPDM and rename the file the link will not be updated. What you should use is the SolidWorks rename as that will update the link. This is with all SolidWorks files. All you do is right click and select Solidworks and then the rename.
Make sure the files have been checked in at least once, so EPDM will know the tree structure and know what file references to update.
Yes, I’m aware of the right click SW rename, I used SW explorer because I wanted to include one of the properties in the name, with SW Explorer I was able to copy and paste the properties into the rename box
Hi Brendon,
I just want to be sure you are posting in the correct forum.
If you are referring to the PDM that is included with SW Professional, it is Workgroup PDM (not Enterprise PDM).
You mentioned that renaming in SW Explorer was 'painful'. Could you be more specific? Were you using the Pack and Go function within SW Explorer? (Actually you can start Pack and Go via RMB (right mouse button) in Windows Explorer. (see first image)
Did you take advantage of the prefix or suffix functions? (see second image)
Regards,
Joy
Joy, if I could interject here, based on Brendon's initial comment, I think the pain in using the solidworks renaming functionality comes from specifying where to check for references to update.
Now, I use PDM at my current job, but at my last location, our components were organized into commodity folders and stored on the network and that included our top-level assemblies and drawings. There were about 60 commodity folders holding 10Gb of files and the only way to systematically ensure that renaming a file would update everything that referenced it was to add those folders to the 'where used' path in solidworks explorer options.
If you want to rename one file to employ a new naming convention (like removing the revision letter that some null-string had appended to the end of the filename), it would take between five and ten minutes to run through all of the folders and catch everything.
If you have to do that with 50 files (because some null-string decided to do away with an entire class of part numbers) you could be at it all night.
Now, if I'm just cloning an assembly tree, I'll use solidworks explorer with no complaints to do that.
You hit the nail on the head...
Its the searching that is the painful.. (or more so that you cant say select 20 files, type the new names in a box and then set it of while you go for a coffee)
so to be clear, does the PDM store this reference information in it database, therefore eliminating the need to search for references' during the renaming?
Hi Brendon and John,
Thanks for the clarification. I need to look into the path issue a bit more.
If you are using Enterprise PDM (EPDM), then yes the reference information is stored in the database. This makes it quite easy to simply move files between folders, rename files and etc and the references are managed.
Best Regards,
Joy
opps, should have posted in the workgroup forum
See my post above about pack n go.
Its the time taken to search part references that makes renaming in SW Explorer painful, if you could select multiple parts and apply the new name, before its searches it wouldn't be so bad.
There are two options (other than PDM)
1. You can use pack and go (if you are renaming multiple files) and rename the files instantly. You can add prefix or suffix to all file names.
2. First rename the files (if files to be renamed are fewer) and then change `Reference..' in assembly (without opening it).