Do you keep file types in different directories? (NON-PDM)

[BodyBagger]

Hello all,
I wanted to poll how different people maintain their files. The company I am at currently seperates everything. Parts, Assemblies, Drawings, Fasteners, Plumbing, Purchased Parts, Electrical, etc... all have seperate file folders. Other companies I have worked for do not do this and they just put everything in one folder. How do you do it and what is your preferred way?

Thanks for your input.

BB

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

Parts, assys and drawings which are dedicated for a particular product/project go into a dedicated product/project file.

Parts, assys and drawings which are common to multiple products/projects go into a Common/Standard folder.

Purchased parts and assys go into a Library folder which has sub-folders for type and/or manufacturer. (Bearings, Optical, Motors, Swagelok, Vacuum, etc).

All the above are kept on a dedicated drive.

 

[AnnaWood]

We do pretty much what CBL does.

For us within the project folder we have a folder for Details. We may also have a folder for files we recieve from the customers. Also folders as needed to organize images files, pdf's, Word docs, etc. If there are purchased components that have custom configurations or sizing that will only work with that project (die springs, cylinder asm's) we will keep them in a Purchased folder within the project. Otherwise all COTS go into a Library folder organized like CBL outlines in his post.

The idea being when we go into the main project folder we will see an organized directory structure and a group of sldasm and sldprt files. We know the group of part and asm files we see in the folder are the ones we need details for and should expect to see a corresponding slddrw in the Detail folder. That way we don't have to slog through drawings and all the other files we may get for a project to get to the solid models.

Hope that is not to confusing.






Anna Wood
Anna Built Workstation, Core i7 EE965, FirePro V8700, 12 gigs of RAM, OCZ Vertex 120 Gig SSD
SW2010 SP0, Windows 7

http://www.solidmuse.com

http://www.phxswug.com

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

Thank you Anna ... you reminded me I also have sub-folders within the project folders for Images (PDF, DXF, JPG, etc), and Documents (Word, Excel, Emails, etc)).

I use multi-sheet drawings, so do not need a separate folder for drawings.

 

[TheTick]

Sorting SW files by type is a simple solution that is undoubtedly the product of simple minds.

 

[Eltron]

I'm pretty much the same as Anna and the Limey.

Dan

http://www.eltronresearch.com

Dan's Blog

 

[MadMango]

Same as CBL and Anna.

At one company without PDM we used 5-digit, non-significant part numbers and after a project was released, the files were separated into sub-folders based on a 100 number span of part numbers. So folders were named 10000, 10100, 10200, etc. Models and associated drawings went into the same folders. Common parts such as hardware and bearings were also given the 5-digit number and resided in the appropriate sub-folders.

Finding which sub-folders to search required use of our ERP system.

"Art without engineering is dreaming; Engineering without art is calculating."

Have you read faq731-376 to make the best use of these Forums?

 

[vidgolob]

We have Assemblies, Parts, Drawings and Text folders. Drawings is further divided into SW, PDF, DXF and DWG folders. Assemblies and its parts have similar names so that anyone can see that they are somehow connected. Standard parts from our suppliers are in a different folder, and that folder is also divided into Assemblies, Parts, Drawings and text folders. Every supplier has its own folder.
Also, Assemblies and Parts have a Archive folder where older versions of parts and assemblies can be storred.
All of the files start with a serial number of the project ( like '506 part 1' - part being named to describe what it acctually is, 506 is a serial number of a project).
All of the projects are inserted into a Excel table that is divided into projects and has hyperlinks to part/assembly and drawing, so you have everything in one place. That means that anyone can find anything I created on my computer very quickly.
This is proving to be very effective.

 

[BodyBagger]

It is interesting that most everyone is doing this very similar. I hope there will be more input to come.

Thanks,
BB

 

[ctopher]

When I started at this current company, everything was saved in project folders with parts/assys/dwgs mixed and duplicated, a real mess.
I prefer CBLs method, but we now use PDMWorks.

Chris
SolidWorks 09 SP4.1
ctopher's home
SolidWorks Legion

 

[SBaugh]

Since all our jobs a never the same we put everything into a single project folder, and then each station is broken down into a folder per station. Each of those folders consist of an assembly with all the subs and parts. It also maintains the drawings for that station. All Library components are maintained from and Excel table that is located on the server. All our files are also stored on the server. We rarly us Toolbox components if we do they are copied to the project/station directory.

Every company is different... so it varies on what is proper. I know everything should have a unique name/number. I know we are looking into better ways to improve ourselves and make each one of us more efficent and hopefully the use of PDM (If I can get that working here ASAP) will make the difference we need.

Good luck,

Scott Baugh, CSWP

http://www.scottjbaugh.com

"If it's not broke, Don't fix it!"

faq731-376

 

[fcsuper]

Drawings and their referenced files should be in a single folder. Assemblies and their components should be in a single folder. Essentially, location of files should be based on the top level assembly (which usually means it is project based).

Matt Lorono
Lorono's SolidWorks Resources & SolidWorks Legion

 

[EdDanzer]

Your method of file storage will depend on the type of business you have, the number of items that are used in multiple products, how much time and money you want to spend setting up your system and if manufacturing or accounting will have to deal with what you create.

We are a small manufacture of low volume products for several different industries built with as many standard components as possible and reuse parts, subassemblies, assemblies, drawings, manuals, and any other files as much as possible. Working part time doing product design I created or modified over 3,000 files last year and currently have over 30,000 files to maintain with some dating back to 1995.

We use a 6 digit semi significant part numbering scheme with primary folders and subfolders to help keep the folder to less than a few hundred files or less. The best is less than 100 files to reduce scrolling time. We use Excel to store the part numbers so anyone can look for part numbers by defining category which is the first few digits of the part number. I have one folder with over 500 part numbers in it and it is time consuming to scroll to CX0564 so I plan on a new folder at CX0600. CX parts are for small customer specific parts and assemblies. Many of these CX parts are created once in a lot quantity of one and may not be duplicated for 5 to 10 years if ever. I can tell you that a customer who needs a 10 year old modification duplicated is very happy when you can ship new parts in a few days.
If manufacturing, service or accounting people need to interact with your files the KISS method should be employed. That is why we use Excel for part number storage instead of PDM or ERP software.

Ed Danzer

http://www.danzcoinc.com

http://www.dehyds.com

 

[hisrik]

We have folders names under various series of product lines and each folder has sub folders for the variations in each series..and in there we have assemblies, common parts and sub assy folders.

Mechanical Engineer

 

[beachcomber]

I wouldn't use different folders for different file types -except for drawings which are often more convenient in their own folders.
My reason would be that they always end up getting mixed up - with the odd file in the wrong folder - especially if you have several people working on a project.
It also become a bit of a pain switching between folders.

bc.
2.4GHz Core2 Quad, 4GB RAM,
Quadro FX4600.

Where would we be without sat-nav?

 

[kellnerp]

This depends on a number of things. If you are doing human based PDM then using special folders can help. If you are using a PDM system it simply doesn't matter and if anything complicates the setup of the PDM.

This discussion has happened before.

In a past life all filetypes where kept in single folders that were allowed to contain up to 1000 part numbers. So the folder tree looked like this:

001000
002000
003000
.
.
.

Even for human based PDM there is not much practical use in keeping files in dedicated folders since assemblies and drawings already know where their files are. Since SW hates it when you move files manually, keeping everything in one folder removes the temptation to move things manually which can be a real problem in team situations. It also removes the temptation to use the same filename twice which is a big no-no.

Use of TOOLS/FILES/REFERENCE FILES is a great way to point SW to the correct folders.

TOP
CSWP, BSSE

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[drawoh]

BodyBagger,

A long time ago, before I used PDM, I stored my part and assembly models in a directory below that of the drawings. I search for drawings. An alternate solution for this is to set the SolidWorks file manager to see only drawings.

Otherwise, we separated things by project, and we had a central directory for standard parts.

The system did not remain in place long enough for some idiot to re-organize directories and break all the file links. This did happen to our old Mechanical Desktop files.

Who works out your directory paths? Think about how your system administrators are going to migrate your files to new, larger hard drives.

JHG

 

[EdDanzer]

Migrating the “Parts” folder with many subfolders and thousands of parts to a new server takes less than 30 minutes even with a USB drive. I know this as we changed servers a few years ago and I just did the year end backup.

My questions to you who do not use a method similar to mine is how many files do you manage and how many new parts and assemblies do you create per week per person?

Ed Danzer

http://www.danzcoinc.com

http://www.dehyds.com

 

[drawoh]

EdDanzer,

Was the new server given the same name and/or drive letter as the old one?

The physical migration of files is easy. Repairing each and every file link after someone changes a directory name can be a disaster, especially when your files are set to read-only.

JHG

 

[EdDanzer]

The server has a folder with the same name as the old network attached hard drive and this folder contains the "Parts" folder so SolidWorks does not know it is not the same drive.

I have loaded the "Parts" folder on my note book and never had problems with assemblies loading in SolidWorks.

Since the file structure, naming conventions and Excel index for locating information work well no one needs to change file or folder names to access and work with the data.

Would you rather do a Google search or use an index in a book to locate information?

Ed Danzer

http://www.danzcoinc.com

http://www.dehyds.com