Archiving Your Design Safely Using Pack and Go to Preserve the Original Revision for Future Changes

Securely archive your complete design as a revision-zero zip file using Pack and Go, ensuring future changes won't affect your original work.

Discover the importance of utilizing a pack and go zip folder to save and archive different versions of your designs. Learn how to generate and access this comprehensive folder, ensuring that the original version of your design remains unaltered even if subsequent changes are made.

Key Insights

  • The pack and go zip folder is a useful tool for archiving your designs. This folder includes every single part, assembly, and drawing file associated with the design, ensuring that the original design remains intact even if modifications are made in the future.
  • Adding a suffix to every file name within the design enhances clarity, making it easier to identify the version of the design file being viewed. This step is especially beneficial when sharing designs with team members or manufacturers.
  • When creating a pack and go zip folder, it's crucial to keep all files checked blue to preserve references to other files, as omitting certain files could break references and potentially harm the design. Also, ensure that the 'include drawings' and 'save as zip file' options are selected.

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In this video, we're going to save everything we've done in this design in an archived folder called a pack and go zip folder. All right, so here we are at our final drawing representing the latest and greatest version of our design. We want to save this as the first revision or the original revision so that that original does not get altered in any way if we decide to make changes to this design moving forward.

I'll show you how to do that now. We'll go to file, then pack and go. All right,  what it's done is it's grabbed every single part, assembly and drawing file associated with this design and it's listed them all right here.

Every single one is checked blue because they are going to be included in our zip folder. Do not uncheck any of these files because they are references to other files and to omit them would be to break references which might hurt the design. So leave everything checked blue.

At the very top, please check the box include drawings so we can include this drawing associated with our design. Next, let's go to this box that says save as zip file. Check that.

Go to browse and find a place on your computer that you want this to live. What I've done is in my regular playground folder,  I've created a new folder called pack and go underscore rev zero for revision zero. Find that folder, double click it, and once you're there, click select folder.

All right,  the last thing we're going to do before we create this pack and go is add a suffix and this will add a suffix to every single file name within this design so that we know which version of that design file we are looking at. So check add suffix and in the text box type underscore rev zero for revision zero and click save and it will create that zip folder for us. All right, now let's go take a look at that.

Here we are. I'm going to go to my pack and go folder. Inside there is a new zip folder called GA001 underscore drawing.

It named it after the file we were in when we created the pack and go. Inside this, and actually I will access this in another way. There we go.

Inside this is every single file that we've created so far now with an underscore rev zero suffix added to the name so as not to confuse it with our current ongoing design which is likely to change. If you're sharing designs with other team members or say manufacturers or you simply want to archive things for the past so that they live without any alterations moving forward, pack and go is the way to do that. Go ahead and close this out.

Thank you and that's it for this video. In the next video, now that we've created the pack and go, we're going to go back to our ongoing design, make some changes in the master model and watch the entire general assembly update.

photo of William Tenney

William Tenney

William Tenney is a career Solidworks designer. He began his career in consumer products then shifted to retail display design, corporate interiors, and finally furniture. His time with Solidworks spans almost two decades where in that time he designed many pieces for mass production, was awarded co-inventor status on five patents, obtained the Professional Certification and Surfacing Certification for Solidworks, and also contributed to many pieces shown in such publications as Architectural Digest, Interior Design Magazine, Fashion Magazine, and 1st Dibs. Outside of his work life, he is a husband to a wonderful spouse and a father to two future creatives.

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