"A Few of My Favorite (SolidWorks) Things"

SolidWorks File References: SolidWorks External Reference Search Order

When any parent document is opened, all documents that are referenced by the parent document are also loaded into memory. In the case of assemblies, components are loaded in memory according to the suppression state they were in when the assembly was saved.

SolidWorks searches for the referenced documents in the following order:

1. RAM (Random Access Memory)
If a file with the correct name is already in RAM (active memory), SolidWorks will use that file.

2. User Defined Paths (The directory paths specified in the Folders list on the on the File Locations tab in Tools, Options)
Users may establish a list of directories for SolidWorks to search before the software's default searches are performed. Generally, these directories would be shared network locations where projects are stored. Establishing this list is optional and must be enabled by checking the "Search File Locations" for "External References" option on the "External References" page of Tools, Options, System Options. Setting this option can be useful in a collaborative environment where the current copies of the work files are stored in a common directory on the network.

3. The last path you specified to open a document
When you open a parent document, SolidWorks will search in the same directory for referenced files.

4. The last path the system used to open a document
This applies if the system opened a referenced document last.

5. Relative Path (The path where the referenced document was located when the parent document was last saved)
This is the path stored in the parent document except that the drive (C:\, D:\, etc.) is considered to be the current drive.

6. Absolute Path (The path where the referenced document was located when the parent document was last saved with the original drive designation)
This is the absolute path stored with the parent document.

If the referenced file is not found after these steps, SolidWorks turns the process over to the user to browse for it.

Note that all updated reference paths in the parent document are saved when you save the parent document.

File names should be unique to avoid bad references. If you have two different parts called bracket.sldprt, a parent document that is looking for the part will use the above search order and use the first part it finds with the name it is looking for.