Using Intelligent File Naming in DriveWorks Solo
DriveWorks Solo offers the ability to take complete control over the naming and location of your generated files.
File naming is an important consideration when planning an implementation, and DriveWorks provides complete flexibility in how files are named.
Your file names can be as simple or as complex as you require, with the ability to suffix, prefix or even ignore a file’s original name.
In this case we are going to use intelligent file naming to allow DriveWorks to re-use a file that has been previously created.
The top-level assembly will still require a unique name, if not, nothing at all could be generated. But all sub-assemblies and parts can be assigned an intelligent naming convention.
Intelligent file names combine parameters within your Project that impact the outcome of the model into the file name. For example, the length or color of a component.
For this to work, a component’s file name rule will need to include the values of all the parameters being driven within the component.
Every time DriveWorks is used to generate new files, the file name rule will be evaluated and if the file name has already been generated, DriveWorks will re-use the existing component. This reduces the number of components being generated and improves model generation time.
Let’s look at an example to see how this works in practice.
In this DriveWorks Solo Conveyor Project we use intelligent file naming to re-use parts within the conveyor assembly.
As previously mentioned, this improves generation time but also allows us to create a library of parts for this assembly. This also helps easily identify files without having to open them in SOLIDWORKS.
Within Model Rules the rule shown below determines whether the file name of the Conveyor Assembly uses Intelligent File Naming. This is controlled by a Check Box Control on the form.
If intelligent file naming returns TRUE, then this rule will use the return of numerous Form Controls along with text strings to identify each value to create a unique file name.
In this example the parameters being used are the Length, Width, Height and whether side rails are required.
If I enter the values 600, 870 and 680 for Length Width and Height, the resulting file name is:
CONVEYOR FRAME ASSEMBLY-600L X 870W X 680H.SLDASM
You can see the result of the generated file names below.
Learn more about Intelligent File Naming in the DriveWorks Solo Online Help File