moving files

Any help in the best way of rearranging files on a 4-workstation operation. We have just started using SW here at work. I like to keep things in a family tree folder on a drive. We ran out of space on the first drive we started storing these at and now we have a brand new drive to dedicate to the models. I need to move all our models to the new place and we have a very large machine and some small ass'ys using these. The path to all of the parts on the large machine are my concern. They easily number over 500 parts. Is there an easy way to set up the new family tree and not screw up all the paths. typical trees separate types of parts ie gears, pulleys, sprockets, shafts, blocks, tabulated models, etc...........
thanks, wally

Maybe if you move everything and then move what you want on the old drive back.
Make sure that the new drive has the same Drive letter as the old one had.(create a new drive letter for the old one) Copy everything over to the new drive. Open anything you want to stay on the origional drive in SW Explorer And rename them. or open and them and do a save as in SW.
Remember, if you know that something is toplevel and has no references to it you should be able to place it anywere without opening it. but if it's not top level then you need to do a save as with the top level opened so the top level gets updated.(drawings would always be top level). Also SolidWorks searches for references in the same folder as the drawing that is being opened before it resorts to the location in the list.
Hope this helps.
Corey Scheich
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Wally,
Without a pdm system, there are some manual ways of doing it. You can do some things with the find references command in solidworks, but the easiest way would be to use solidworks explorer. Here is a document from the subscription area on SolidWorks website that might help you.
http://files.solidworks.com/Support/html/KBTechTips/FileManagement/SWExplorer.htm
This is not a replacement for a real PDM system.
Hope it helps,
Mike
Wchasebunch wrote:
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If the entire tree structure is under one top level folder it is easy. Move the top level folder with it's entire tree structure to the new drive and everything will work as it did on the original drive. SolidWorks doesn't care about the drive letter the root folder is on, just the structure under it. For example: We have everything SolidWorks under a shared folder called "Engineering" on server "eagle" drive E:. I can move the folder "Engineering" with all it's contents to a different server and drive and go to a lower level folder and open an assembly and it will find all the parts (models) located in other branches of the Engineering folder on this new drive location. We have 3 seats and the "Engineering" folder contains 2,928 sub folders, 45,745 files and 14.9 GB of data. Most of this is SolidWorks files with or largest assembly containing over 2,500 files scattered across many of these folders. If they are not under a common folder, create one on the new drive and copy all the folders from the old drive to this new drive top folder, keeping the structure from the hightest level on the old drive the same under the new drive/folder. Copy first before you delete anything on the old drive. You can also add search paths to SolidWorks under Tools>Options>File Locations>Referenced Documents to tell it where to look for common files.
Dave H
Wchasebunch wrote:
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