Need File name Organizational Help
Need File name Organizational Help
(OP)
I have been using solidWorks for a few years now and am pretty comfortable with it. However, I find myself struggling mostly with file name and organization at the folder level with certain types of projects. When I model a small project containing a few assemblies and parts I have no problem because its easy to name files discriptively to relate to their content. However, larger projects especially prototype projects where I have many revisions of the same part as necessary for product development the naming of the files usually boil down to a simple letter number code as a BOM would have, But I don't use BOMs. Many of my projects do not have formal assemblies, just a ton of tooling details with small assemblies as required for clarity.
I'm not sure if this makes sense to anybody, but I'm looking for an easy way to find a particular part file without an assembly file to open it from. I was thinking of maybe using the Comment field in the "file open" dialog box properties / summary tab to hold a more descriptive name or sentence and adding the Comment tab along side the Name tab in the dialog box, this way I could sort by Comment and then just click to open the file.
Does anybody have a similar issue or better suggestions?
I'm not sure if this makes sense to anybody, but I'm looking for an easy way to find a particular part file without an assembly file to open it from. I was thinking of maybe using the Comment field in the "file open" dialog box properties / summary tab to hold a more descriptive name or sentence and adding the Comment tab along side the Name tab in the dialog box, this way I could sort by Comment and then just click to open the file.
Does anybody have a similar issue or better suggestions?
Tom Malinski
Sr Design Engineer
OKay Industries
New Britain CT






RE: Need File name Organizational Help
Chris
Systems Analyst, I.S.
SolidWorks 06 4.1/PDMWorks 06
AutoCAD 06
ctopher's home (updated 06-21-05)
RE: Need File name Organizational Help
Tom Malinski
Sr Design Engineer
OKay Industries
New Britain CT
RE: Need File name Organizational Help
Chris
Systems Analyst, I.S.
SolidWorks 06 4.1/PDMWorks 06
AutoCAD 06
ctopher's home (updated 06-21-05)
RE: Need File name Organizational Help
RE: Need File name Organizational Help
Tom Malinski
Sr Design Engineer
OKay Industries
New Britain CT
RE: Need File name Organizational Help
In PDMW, when you select a file name you see a preview of what it looks like.
Remember, you are working in the 3D world now. Wipe out ACAD thinking when working with SW. (2D vs 3D)
Chris
Systems Analyst, I.S.
SolidWorks 06 4.1/PDMWorks 06
AutoCAD 06
ctopher's home (updated 06-21-05)
RE: Need File name Organizational Help
Tom Malinski
Sr Design Engineer
OKay Industries
New Britain CT
RE: Need File name Organizational Help
Chris
Systems Analyst, I.S.
SolidWorks 06 4.1/PDMWorks 06
AutoCAD 06
ctopher's home (updated 06-21-05)
RE: Need File name Organizational Help
With PDM, you can also display the part description (that you added in File Properties) along with the file name.
RE: Need File name Organizational Help
thanks,
Tom...
Tom Malinski
Sr Design Engineer
OKay Industries
New Britain CT
RE: Need File name Organizational Help
I still suggest looking into PDMW.
Good luck.
Chris
Systems Analyst, I.S.
SolidWorks 06 4.1/PDMWorks 06
AutoCAD 06
ctopher's home (updated 06-21-05)
RE: Need File name Organizational Help
I have a folder of project folders, sequentially numbered. Assemblies have a leading zero, parts are sequential from 1000 up.
P29-0100 Assembly; P29-1000 First Part, for example.
I am sure disaster waits for us around the corner.
--
Hardie "Crashj" Johnson
SW 2005 SP 4.0 (reluctant to change)
Matrox Millenium G550
AMD Athalon 1.8 GHz 512 Meg RAM
RE: Need File name Organizational Help
Chris
Systems Analyst, I.S.
SolidWorks 06 4.1/PDMWorks 06
AutoCAD 06
ctopher's home (updated 06-21-05)
RE: Need File name Organizational Help
If your company has no standards for file naming OR descriptions, this is where you should start. Hammer out those standards then start up your PDM and configure it accordingly. The more work you put into getting your file names and descriptions standardized the less trouble you'll have down the road.
Kevin Carpenter
CAD Systems Specialist
Invacare Corp.