PDM systems enforce this. Outside PDM it is good practice, never have a copy with the same name…in any CAD tool.
Why put file in different folders if not use PDM/PLM? I put all in one folder so never ever have same name in two files. My template files is in a separate folder and FEM, because Simulation create huge amount of files.
I run SP4 and my feeling it run great compare to SP3. But i upgrade to W10 21H1 at same time,
Depends on how may files you have, 100,000 files in one folder can be slow, especially on a network drive. Also we have a library of folders based on type for purchased items so they can be dragged in via the task pane Design Library.
I rolled back my Solidworks to service pack 3 so that I wont get blasted with the bugs we haven’t discovered yet.
Man .. 1 step forward and 5 steps back anymore with these guys.
So you don’t go absolutely insane? How many files do you have that you can possibly have them all in the same directory? I wish people would actually use MORE directories here. We have directories with a 1000, probably some with multiple thousands, of files in them and it makes me nuts.
If you have a search tool, the fewer directories the better. Even if you’re searching manually, additional directories just mean more clicking. If you search by typing, a single directory is best. For PDM, I used to have certain rules for creating folders. I’ve forgotten what they were. I’ll look them up because now I’m curious…
Here’s where I’ll disagree with you. There are two ways of looking for something, searching and browsing.
- Searching, I know what I’m looking for and put in the appropriate search criteria. Folders are somewhat irrelevant although could still be useful to search within a sub-folder structure to minimize search results. Also see search results along with folder paths can help make decisions on whether I got the right file.
- Browsing, I don’t know exactly what I’m looking for, but I’ll know it when I see it. Scanning through a single folder with 20,000 files is exhausting. Scanning “c:\Work\Treehouse Project\Customer inputs” where there may only be 50 files is so much easier.
Folder standards really help and PDM can help that with templates.
Maybe less clicking but way more typing which I think is a whole lot slower than clicking. We have part numbers that are 25-30 characters long. I can get to those part numbers in 2-3 clicks into the right subdirectories.
I think it would also prove to be difficult if you weren’t sure what the part number was, IE browsing for a part number or “Something like this”.
For me having Sub dirs essentially creates a natural filter.
I can see some benefit to having a single or few sub dirs. In fact you can definitely have too many sub dirs. But unless you have a whole lot of homogeneity to your part numbers I think having a single dir would be an absolute nightmare.
These are the reasons you rely on search. If you don’t know a part number, maybe you know a description, even a material. You must know something about it other than visual. What project is it in, does it have a parent part or assembly, does it show up on another document’s where used list… I can’t imagine professionally curated data where you don’t know something about a file that you’re looking for.
Here’s an example. All of our projects are in directories. Those directories contain the project number, description of the project and customer. Our part numbers ONLY contain the project number. So I might know something is a saw and was for customer X. By simply clicking on the Saw project folder I can look for “Customer X” and know where my file is. Literally one or two clicks short of opening the file.
Typically, for me and places I’ve worked, directories are used to provide a “Pathway” to the parts with information that is generally easier to remember but rarely any part of the part number.
Yeah, you need a PDM system. I can’t imagine working like that.
Been working like that forever.
Customer Name\Job Number
We’re custom machine shop.
There are no cross over between customers.
We have a PDM system. Pretty much every place I have ever worked is set up like that.
Even worse here. We have a custom machine shop, standard machine builds, custom machine builds, three or four product lines that are sold by part number and three or four “Re-sale” product lines. Parts that go into our standard products are run thru our machine shop which is set up as a “custom” machine shop.
Different number conventions in different departments, different sub dirs and so on. What makes complete sense for a product line is insanity for a custom built machine and so on.
So you have search tools, you just don’t use them?
300 000 files according to Microsoft. I use Onedrive
No, I don’t use them because it seems way faster to find them by browsing. Especially when you’re working on “Groups” of files or related files etc.
I use various searches when it’s appropriate or when I think it will be faster.
I guess, for me, it’s like all things. I’m not married to one or the other approach. Search works on a single directory or hundreds. Why not set up your directory structure in such a way that it is also helpful for browsing? So if browsing or familiarity is the easiest way to find a file, use that. If searching is the easiest way to find a file, use that.
In either case a single directory is not a great approach as doing so limits you to only one approach to finding files.
I feel your pain. We don’t have PDM, but we have CustomTools, which somewhat does a similar thing I guess.
We have standard products
Custom products
Custom projects
standard projects
What’s the distinction between a project and a product? the repetitiveness of it.“Standard” projects are still very custom, but they’re defined as standard when the client decides to buy a multitude of that project.
Sorry, I haven’t been totally following the conversation. I guess I’m keyed in to a certain method for file naming, descriptions, and other meta data. In PDM, for my system, folders are used primarily to assign permissions to groups of people, such as design engineering, manufacturing engineering, purchasing, product/project management. I suppose you could do that based on other meta data. I always found folders to just be another meaningless thing to click, especially in PDM.
It really depends on the organization of your company, and who gets access to whatever you’re putting in the vault. The way you do it is how I would do it if I didn’t have PDM. I was working at a company that had specific lines of products, about 20 CAD users, and probably 60 people who accessed the CAD data, plus a ECO/ECN system that was routed through the PDM workflow.
How did we get started talking about file structure?
C’mon maaaaaan!! We need to get back to ripping on Solidworks. We can’t let this distract us from our goal. 