File Management for Solidworks
Introduction:
File management is an aspect of computers that can often be found to be confusing and often lead to unnecessary frustration. This short lesson aims to explain file management and equip the computer user with adequate knowledge to confidently create folders and save documents and files into these folders.
A useful analogy to first consider is the filing cabinet. We are all familiar with how a filing cabinet is set up. A filing cabinet contains a number of drawers. These drawers are like the memory devices we have in our computers.
Within each drawer are a number of labeled folders. Within each folder there may be a number of sub-folders and within these sub-folders there may be documents such as letters and bills etc.
A ‘Drive’ is the name we use to refer to the name of a computers storage device.
You may have heard of the ‘C – Drive’ which is an internal memory device in all computers.
The CD Rom Drive is the drive we use to access the memory stored on Compact Discs.
Your USB key is also an external memory drive that can be accessed by inserting it into a USBPort in your PC.
Now if we can imagine that one drawer in our filing cabinet is like one drive in our computer. Some of these drawers may be bigger than others, which enables them to store more data.
Considerations with regard to file management are essential when working with Solidworks. This lesson will look at a best practice approach to creating folders and saving Solidworks parts to these previously created folders.
Before starting to work within Solidworks it is a good idea to create a folder to save to. A folder is a Microsoft Windows feature that is used to keep data organized on your computers memory system.
Every computer has a folder called ‘My Documents’.
This folder is found on your desktop along withother regularly used folders and applications.
Double click on the ‘My Documents’ icon on your desktop. The folder opens. The My Documents folder will contain some default windows folders that are already created. (e.g. My Pictures, My Music)
The following steps explain how to create our own ‘DCG’ folder within the My Documents folder.
Step 1:
Open My Documents and click on ‘File’.
Step 2:
Within the ‘File menu’ select ‘New’. A pop-out menu appears.
Step 3:
Select ‘Folder’ on this pop-out menu. The folder is created and placed in the ‘My Documents’ folder.
Step 4:
The folder that has been created is named ‘New Folder’ by default. To rename the folder, right click on the new folder and select ‘Rename’ from the right-click menu.
The title of the folder can then be changed. To change the name, type your selected folder name (D.C.G.)and it automatically replaces the default folder name.
Result:
We have now created a simple filing system.
My Documents now contains a folder called D.C.G.
File Management Exercise:
A useful exercise is to create a folder in My Documents called ‘School’.
Within the School folder create subject folders. (E.g. D.C.G., Construction Studies, Engineering, Etc.)
These folders can then be used to store relevant material from each subject area.
Concentrating on Solidworks, we should now create a folder within D.C.G. named ‘Solidworks’.
Design and Communication Graphics