Moving part files into new folders breaks assemblies.

[fuzzybabybunny]

I wasn't very smart when I made my parts and assemblies and the organization of the part/assembly files are atrocious. I use the built-in solidworks explorer to move the part files to new folders, but this breaks the assemblies that rely on the part files because now the part files are not in their original location.

If I move 20 parts then I've got 20 errors that I have to manually fix to get my assembly working again.

Is there any way to fix this? Does Solidworks 2009 have an intelligent update feature where it updates the references in the assembly when a part file is moved?

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

If the search paths are set correctly, SW Explorer should manage to maintain all references between assys, models and drawings.

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

Thanks for the reply!

I'm a little confused though:

Say that I have Assembly 1 that references these two parts:

C:/solidworks/stuff/part1
C:/solidworks/stuff/part2

And now I change the "stuff" folder name to "things."

C:/solidworks/things/part1
C:/solidworks/things/part1

But what I've found is that the assembly still breaks. It can find "part1," but it can no longer locate "part2," even though both parts are in the same folder!

 

[NomLaser]

Set your SW Search Path to include C:/Solidworks That might help. You can always pack n' go all parts into a new folder and just rename that folder. As long as the parts, assemblies and drawings are all in the same folder you won't have any issues. When I was using PDMWorks Workgroup, I always worked out of only one folder. This way all of my references never relied on a folder location.

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

Sorry, I meant to say that my Search Path IS set to C:/solidworks and it still has the same problem.

Question: Does solidworks need to index the locations first before the parts can be moved safely? How do you tell Solidworks to begin indexing?

 

[kellnerp]

One very easy solution since you have so few parts is to open the parts in their new locations and then open the assembly and save it.

RULE No. 1 is that SW searches memory first when looking for external references. So if a file with the same name as that referenced by the assembly is open in memory, the references are fixed.

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