How to move or rename files without breaking references

Best practice for renaming or moving part files

If you would like to rename or move a part or assembly file the method to achieve this is to use the functionality provided by the CAD designer program. Below are instructions to do this for SolidWorks.

1

Locate the assembly and parts of your project in your local directory.

2

Right click on a part of a SolidWorks part file and open the SolidWork context menu.

3

Select rename or move from the SolidWorks context menu.

4

Move the file or rename the file in the prompt which appears after selecting the option you want.

5

After you have done one or more of these actions the assembly file is now updated with the correct references to the renamed or moved part files. When you are ready you can go into Workbench to view the pending changes.

6

Click to view the pending changes and select the changes you want to upload. Notice the assembly file shows a pending change since the references to the parts have been updated from the rename and move actions.

Using rename to combine files

If you have two files with two different names, you can combine them into one file on Workbench. This is useful if you use a renaming convention locally to keep track of versions, but you would like Workbench to show only the latest version of the file and contain the older versions in the version history.

1

Say for instance that in your Workbench project, you have several part files with suffixes that denote version. Start with the oldest version and rename it. Use the name you would like for the combined file.

2

Then go to the next newest version and rename it to the same name. You will be asked to decide how to combine these files. In this case you want to chose "Update"

4

Continue this process with each successive newer version. Version numbers will increase from 1 and are not read from the file name