a little here, a little there

SolidWorks Pack & Go.  Do you use it?  I use this tool all of the time.  The ability to take an entire assembly and save it off, keeping all of its relations, into another file structure.  Well the 1 pet peeve that I always had was if I wanted my assembly in a top level folder but all of the other components in a sub assembly it got kind of scary at time.  Take the image below for example.  I want the assembly that I am using the Pack & Go on to be in this folder, BUT I want the components of the assembly in the 150-1 press components folder.  What I used to end up doing was sending them all to the 150-1 press components folder, manually moving the assembly back up to this folder, and then as soon as I open the assembly redirect the components to the folder that they were in.  Man, that whole explanation even made my head spin, confusing I know.  Well there is a way to get around this that is MUCH, MUCH more stable and very simple.

To start, open up your assembly and go to File > Pack & Go.  Once you have done this you should see a screen like the one below.

Towards the bottom you will see a spot that says “Save to folder”.  Hit the browse button and select the folder that you would like to save your new assembly to.  As you can see below I have selected the 150-1 press components folder that we discussed earlier.  As it stands right now all of my files will be saved into that folder as you can see by the path of all of the files under the “Save To Folder” column.

Here is where you can get a little tricky with the Pack & Go functionality.  If you double click on the Save to Folder cell of the assembly (should be the top item) you will get a dialog box that looks like the one below.  Notice how the original folder contains the path that you told it earlier (150-1 press components).  By hitting the browse button along side the New folder name area you can select the top level folder instead.

As you can see below you have now told SolidWorks to send the assembly to the folder called sta. 11 pierce but the rest of the components are going to the 150-1 press components folder.

Just like that you have sent the files into the desired locations that you would like as shown by the image below.

This is a very nice way to keep your filing system clean and stable when you are using the Pack & Go tool.  I hope this helps anyone that has dealt with this kind of thing in the past.