How to Reassign part to a drawing.

[ecoology]

I have an assembly with about 50 parts. They are all in folder A. I then created drawings for all parts, with the drawings in folder A/drawings.

After an extensive redesign, I copied all of the parts to a new folder, B. I then copied the A/drawings folder [with all 50 drawings] to a new folder B/drawings.

When I open any of the drawings in B/drawings, they do not associate with the appropriate parts in B/drawings, they refer to the parts in A/drawings.

How do I redesignate the "B" parts to each drawing, instead of the "A" parts that the drawings were originally made from; or am I stuck with redoing all of the drawings? That would be a pain!

 

[HaroldL]

There are internal references that need to be maintained and doing a Windows copy does not retain those references.
I think the way to save all the parts and related drawings to a new folder would be to do a SAVE AS from the drawing. Then you could assign the new location and even rename parts and drawings if you wanted to.

 

[ecoology]

I tried that, but that doesn't work. I need to know how to modify the "meta data" in a drawing file that defines the associated part. I am not a coder, so I have that disadvantage.

 

[DavidJ]

I believe Harold means that you should open the drawing in folder A, from the open drawing do a Save As, and choose the 'Save All' option - you can then nominate location for the new files to be saved (drawing and part).

Do not even attempt manual editing of meta data - it won't work. Any edit will cause the file checksum to fail, and the file will then be useless.

There are dodges to re-link a drawing, but very prone to error and potentially other problems. Attempt entirely at your own risk.

Remove Folder A entirely so that when you open a drawing from folder B, it can't find the associated part. A 'missing part' dialogue will open - select the part in the dialogue, click the 'Replace' button, then navigate to the part in folder B and accept the part. Files should be linked.

I repeat - this is not a commonly recommended technique.


You will have the same problem with your assembly file if you copied it outside of Alibre - it will look for the parts in folder A, rather than in folder B.

You absolutely should avoid copying files outside of Alibre - it has many non-obvious side effects.

 

[ecoology]

I will give that a try. This sounds like a workable solution to my problem.
Thank you

 

[ecoology]

It works! David, your suggestion works perfectly.
Thank you all for your kind assistance