Have you ever been working on an assembly and realized that you weren’t working with the most recent files/changes to sub-components? With SOLIDWORKS PDM you can ensure every time you open a file with subcomponents, those sub-components are always referencing the most recent version in the vault with the “Always work with the latest version of files” setting.
To enable the “Always work with the latest version of files” setting:
- Open the Administration tool and log in to the vault you want to enable this setting on.
- Navigate and expand the Group/User node.
PDM Administration tool showing the “Users and Groups Management” node
- Right-click the “Group” or specific “User” you want to enable this setting on and select “Settings”.
- “Settings” are applied differently than “Permissions”, this means that if you take a user out of the group it will keep this setting enabled as any option selected in the “Settings” menu will always get applied at the user level.
Right-click on a group and show the “Settings” option
- Navigate to the “Reference Dialog” node and select “Always work with latest version of files”.
Group Settings – “Always work with latest version files” setting
Enabling this setting will force the user to automatically cache the most recent version of files when doing a check out and when opening a file. See the images below that show the “Check out” dialog menu, with the “Always work with…” setting disabled you have the option to “Get” a version of the files but with the setting enabled you don’t get that option.
Check out the dialog without “Always work with latest version of files”
Check out the dialog with “Always work with latest version of files”
This will also disable the “Get” option from the “History” menu but the “View” options should still be available for previewing old versions of files.
History menu – Grayed out “Get” Action
If you want to look at a past version of a file in their applications, you can check the setting “Enable the get version command in SOLIDWORKS Add-in” that is directly underneath the “Always work with latest version of files” setting.
Group Settings – “Enable the get version command in SOLIDWORKS Add-in” setting
This setting will allow you to get the previous version of files from the SOLIDWORKS Add-in menu.
“Get Version” menu from the PDM SOLIDWORKS Add-in interface
To learn more about SOLIDWORKS PDM, check out our PDM training courses here.
