Solidworks Onboarding

Installation

Follow the COE SolidWorks Student Installation Instructions.

File Organization

Top Level - When you open the Vault, this is what you see:

NER 17, 22, etc. - These are the folders where the actual car CAD files are kept. On the top level, they are organized by car number. Within the car folders there is a folder for each system, which can be seen below. Each system folder will then have folders for all of its respective projects. Within each project, the project lead organizes their files how they see fit.

The scheme is as follows: Car # > System > Project > …

Hardware - This is a folder where all communal hardware lives. Within the Hardware folder, there is a folder for each type of hardware (nuts, bolts, washers, etc.). All users can add to and pull from here whenever using hardware in their projects.

SW Electrical Data - This is where a lot of files for testing out SolidWorks Electrical live. We tend to not use it.

Weldment Profiles and Sheet Formats - This folder contains templates for our manufacturing drawings, as well as tube profiles. The folders can be linked seamlessly with SolidWorks to allow you to directly use these profiles when creating a weldment feature or pick the NER template when creating a drawing.

Part Numbering

In order to make files easy to find, all files uploaded to the PDM Vault must be named in accordance to the part numbering guidelines.

A Google Sheet with all of our part numbers can be found at the link below:

Parts & Assemblies

The “NER Parts” section of the sheet applies to everything except hardware ordered from a website. When you input the Car, Subsystem, and Common Name into the sheet, it will provide you with a correctly formatted file name on the right. The format is as follows:

SubsystemDesignation_CommonName_Index-CarNumber

Index: Pulled from the sheet, unique to each part.

Common Name: A short descriptor of the part. Should be named with NoSpacesAndFirstLettersCapitalized.

Car Number: Which car the part is for.

Subsystem Designation: Essentially corresponds to project. A list of all acronyms can be seen below.

Hardware

Learn to Use Solidworks