Chapter 3. Preparing Document Management
The interrelationships between part, assembly, and drawing documents in SolidWorks need to be managed more carefully than a system of flat files. SolidWorks and all 3D parametric modelers have some special needs when it comes to file management. If you follow some simple rules, you can manage the files successfully.
However, taking many shortcuts with file management may leave you with a set of disassociated documents if you do not understand and follow the document management rules and handle files according to those rules. The better you understand the rules, the more you can bend and even break them, but trying to break rules without a complete understanding of the rules and consequences is risky.
If you or your company is new to SolidWorks, it is important to get your document management process figured out as early as you can. How painful making changes to an existing system will be depends on how entrenched the system is, and how many changes you have to make. You have many important choices before you, and it is not easy to change your decisions later on if you discover a flaw in your reasoning or execution. You have to understand the issues completely right up front and make good decisions right away that you will live with for the life of your document management system. While ...
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