From the course: SOLIDWORKS: Customize the User Interface

File location customization - SOLIDWORKS Tutorial

From the course: SOLIDWORKS: Customize the User Interface

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File location customization

- [Instructor] One of the more advanced customizations that's available to us is the ability to customize the file locations for the SOLIDWORKS installation. Now this can be as simple as just changing the location for your default templates, but might go so far as to changing various databases for how the hole wizard or the toolbox works, for example. So to do this, we go up to the settings button. Click on it. And then on the tab on the left, we go over to file locations. Now, by default, the thing that shows up first is document templates, because this is almost the most important thing that we set. We need to know where the templates are, so that we can open up part files, assembly files, and drawing files. And once we make this selection, and point to these locations, you'll notice over in the default templates location, you can see the directory with each template inside of it. And you can only choose a new template from inside of the locations that you've dictated in the file locations. Now, to change this, you simply select one of the items, and you can move it up or move it down. You can delete it. You can add a new location as well, by navigating to it. You can also edit all of the locations at once, and we'll take a look at that in a second. But the first thing we're going to see is what we can actually change for the file locations. Now you can see this is a very long list of things related to SOLIDWORKS that we have the ability to change. So for example, for sheet metal designs, we have sheet metal bend lines, bend tables, gage tables, we have material databases, we have custom design libraries, custom appearances, reference documents, blocks; I mean, the list goes on and on. You have the ability to edit all of these things. Now, let's say for example, you're doing a new installation at your business, and you have a multi-user environment and you've dropped various parts of this installation in different locations, and you want to edit all of these locations at once. You can click on edit all, and it's going to bring up this list, and it's going to show you every single file location that you have defined. You can then go through, and select these one at a time, double click, and navigate to the folder where you expect to find whatever it is you're looking for. So if it's an appearance folder, or a material database, or anything related to your document templates, right? You can find and replace things. So let's say you're looking for something specific, you can find and replace it. So, let's say you have one directory for all of these, but your changing it to another directory, you can hit find replace and then just find that directory and replace it with a new one. Pretty easy to do. When you're done with all these changes, you hit save, and then go back in and all of those changes will be implemented. I'm going to hit cancel right now 'cause I don't want to mess with anything. With that said, I'm going to give you a warning at this point. Do not mess with any of these file locations unless you have a specific reason. Most users will only add more document templates, or, perchance, a design library so that they can share downloaded files between multiple users from a single location. But once you go through here, and start changing all these various locations, it can have some devastating effects if it's not done correctly. For example, you can very easily break your hole wizard or your toolbox or any other settings that are related to this. SOLIDWORKS is a very larger piece of software. It's larger than 10 gigabytes, and it needs these pathways clearly dictated so that it can pull all of the features up correctly, and not cause any failures in your models, or any corruption in the data in the background. So, you know, with that, I'll say that you can customize it as much as you'd like, and there are very many options. But do so carefully, and if you're working with multiple users in your company, you should definitely have a discussion about that and what the effects are going to be. When you're done making all those changes, just click OK and they're now accepted into your system setup.

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