How do you guys organize your files? 4

[fuzzybabybunny]

I'm new to CAD design and I'm wondering how you guys organize your files and what are the best practices?

Do you put assemblies, parts, drawings, in separate folders?

C:/Solidworks/Project1/parts
C:/Solidworks/Project1/drawings
C:/Solidworks/Project1/assemblies
C:/Solidworks/Project1/subassemblies

And how do you deal with the versioning?

 

[EdDanzer]

The store analogy has to do with finding parts stored by insignificant part numbering. Unless you have the part number you have no idea where to start. I am aware many companies do this and they are totally dependent on software to find anything. If you are in a high production fully automated (big bucks) environment this works. If you ever do prototyping, repair or do not have automated storage storing by insignificant number would be like going to the store to find what you need with thing randomly mixed on the shelf. Milk might by dog food or diapers.

We are a small company, I design in SolidWorks, order materials, machine, weld assembly and test many of these products. We do repair and sell parts as well. This make our requirements different, even more demanding than most companies as we must be competitively priced and make a profit on commodity items like fasteners.

We use a new part number for new non interchangeable parts and assemblies instead of revision numbers at the end of a part number to eliminate customer confusion when ordering a part. I doubt any of the standards bodies address customer interaction as part of their requirements.

In these difficult times figuring out how to save money should be more important than following some ASME, SAE, ISO ect. Standard that may put you out of business.

Trying to have SolidWorks do everything may not be the best choice.

Ed Danzer

http://www.danzcoinc.com

http://www.dehyds.com

 

[kellnerp]

More like a soup can analogy where you have numbers on the cans and the labels get ripped off.

There is one big difference with SW. There are tools available within the SW install that allow a part to be found if it has any kind of description. A part should get a description at creation time. That simple rule applies to a job shop or a big mfg. concern. SW Explorer can access that description. MSoft's Explorer can't and you shouldn't be using it to find files anyway.

Even if you are a job shop, chances are you have some way of tracking parts other than a directory listing. Perhaps a spreadsheet on the side to facilitate unique file names and numbers. If I was a job shop I would keep track of how much time was in each file.

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