The 3DEXPERIENCE platform provides many advantages for collaboration within your team. SOLIDWORKS Cloud Services includes cloud-based data management making it easier to work on projects with colleagues or access your data on the go. SOLIDWORKS Connected or traditional SOLIDWORKS combined with Collaborative Designer for SOLIDWORKS gives a direct link between SOLIDWORKS and the 3DEXPERIENCE platform to open and save your model data.
SOLIDWORKS data can be managed directly through 3DEXPERIENCE to gain revision control and maturity functionality to maintain templates. However, there are many other SOLIDWORKS libraries to consider when storing engineering and design data in 3DEXPERIENCE. Customized libraries for weldment profiles or sheet metal gauge tables may need to be shared between the team, ensuring everyone stays up to date with changes. These can be saved to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform and referenced in SOLIDWORKS settings.
Creating SOLIDWORKS Libraries in 3DEXPERIENCE
The first step is to create an organized structure of bookmarks within the Bookmark Editor app through an internet browser. You can create a directory of templates & libraries and subfolders for each type, then drag and drop your files into each folder.
3DEXPERIENCE library structure
Managing Weldment Profiles in 3DEXPERIENCE
For weldments, we need to follow a similar naming structure of Standard>Type>Size in all the bookmarks created. It’s recommended to have the weldment standard name customized to differentiate between the default weldment standards provided with SOLIDWORKS. As an example, we will set up a single standard “TriMech – ANSI Inch”.
Drag local profiles into 3DEXPERIENCE
To get weldment profiles into 3DEXPERIENCE you can just drag and drop the weldment profile files from Windows File Explorer into the bookmark. You can also just drag Windows folders to create new bookmarks and add the files within the folder.
3DEXPERIENCE bookmark structure from Windows folders
Point SOLIDWORKS to the 3DEXPERIENCE Libraries
The next step is to reference the various libraries in the File Locations section in the SOLIDWORKS System Options. When adding a new location, the “Select from 3DEXPERIENCE” option can be used to select content from a related bookmark. This process will take a few minutes as during this time, the 3DEXPERIENCE library is syncing down into the end user’s local cache.
The default location for the local cache is C:\Users\Public\Documents\SOLIDWORKS.
Select from 3DEXPERIENCE option
Below, the “Weldment Profiles” library location is surrounded by brackets. The brackets indicate the connection to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. Click this row and select “Update” to check that the local cache is up to date or obtain the latest copies. The update button will show all file locations linked to 3DEXPERIENCE libraries making it easier to stay in sync with changes. With the file locations up to date, the weldment profiles we created will be available to choose from inside SOLIDWORKS.
Updating local library files from 3DEXPERIENCE
Updating Library Files
If a library file needs to be updated we can do so from the Bookmark Editor on a web browser. After navigating to the file in the bookmark, right-click on the file and choose “Update”. This prompts you to locally browse for the updated file and ultimately replace the content. Once the file in 3DEXPERIENCE is updated, users can use the “Update” button in their SOLIDWORKS System Options to update their local cache.
Updating library files on 3DEXPERIENCE
One of the smartest decisions for a team to make is to store their SOLIDWORKS libraries and templates alongside their design data to gain the same revision and lifecycle controls as their SOLIDWORKS files. Thanks to SOLIDWORKS Cloud Services and the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, we have complimentary, integrated functionality to do just that.
While we focused on templates and weldment profiles in this article we can also use this method to control SOLIDWORKS libraries for routing components. To see that in action, read our recent blog post here.
