Hi all,
I'm a fairly new Solidworks user so forgive me for asking what is probably a question that has been answered many times. I'm not sure what the correct nomenclature is so I can't effectively search for the answer.
I have an assembly that contains a large number of parts which are all stored in one folder.
I have now made a second assembly, which also references those same parts. However I want the two assemblies to be independent, so that if I modify any one of the parts for one assembly, it doesn't cause conflict with the second assembly.
Therefore, when I create and save my second assembly, is there a way to automatically save it so that ALL constituent parts and sub-assemblies are copied over to the new folder?
I don't want to copy and rename individual files if I can help it - there's too many of them for that to be practical.
Thanks!
Pack & Go is what you are looking for. There is more than one way to get there but if you have the assy open, you can get to it from the File menu. The dialog that opens allows you to copy the assy and all of its parts (if you wish) into another location and update the assy so that it references the new location parts.
There is also an option to add a prefix or suffix to all the parts. This is a good idea if you would ever happen to open both assy's at the same time. If you leave the parts all the original names, and you happen to open one assy or the other and then open the other one, the parts that are in memory will be loaded for both. You can't open the same name part from multiple locations - the version of a part loaded in memory always wins. So think ahead a bit.
WT