Migrating to a Shared Toolbox

A Toolbox administrator can migrate individual Toolbox installations to a shared Toolbox.

Users who migrate to the shared environment might have assembly documents that reference local versions of the SOLIDWORKS Toolbox parts. Potential issues include:
  • A user's local SOLIDWORKS Toolbox parts might contain part configurations that do not exist in the shared environment.
  • A user might have assigned part numbers and descriptions to local SOLIDWORKS Toolbox parts that are different from the shared parts.

To migrate SOLIDWORKS files to a shared Toolbox:

  1. Ensure that the existing seats in the shared environment and the seat that is migrating to the shared environment have the same SOLIDWORKS and SOLIDWORKS Toolbox versions.
  2. Instruct each user to point SOLIDWORKS to the shared Toolbox folder:
    1. Click Options (Standard toolbar).
    2. On the System Options tab, click Hole Wizard/Toolbox.
    3. For Hole Wizard and Toolbox folder, type or browse to the shared Toolbox folder (for example, \\server\SOLIDWORKS Data\). Specify a UNC path (recommended).
    4. Click OK.
  3. Rename the local SOLIDWORKS Toolbox parts folder.
    Assembly documents that reference local SOLIDWORKS Toolbox parts now have broken references. To fix broken references, users can browse for each part in the new shared Toolbox location, or SOLIDWORKS can search for external references (recommended).
  4. To configure SOLIDWORKS to search for external references, instruct each user to do the following:
    1. Click Options (Standard toolbar).
    2. On the System Options tab, in the left pane, click External References.
    3. Under Search external references in, select Reference Documents specified in File Location.
    4. In the left pane, click File Locations.
    5. For Show folders for, select Referenced Documents, click Add, then browse to the shared location of the SOLIDWORKS Toolbox parts.
    6. Click OK.
    7. Open and save each assembly document that used local referenced parts.
    8. After updating all assembly documents, clear Search file locations for external references.
  5. Back up and delete the local SOLIDWORKS Toolbox parts folder.