SolidWorks Quick Tip - Save As Copy and Open

By Jeff Brown

If you've been using SolidWorks for some time, I’m sure you have come across this very annoying situation- I know I have:

You're working on a design and suddenly get a great idea that you’d like to tinker with, but you don’t want to modify your existing models just yet.  You perform a “Save as Copy”, since that does not replace references on open documents like a “Save As” does.  So you Save as Copy, and start making changes, things look good so you click Save... That’s when you realize you were working on the active document this whole time.  Save as Copy only saves to the hard drive, but does not open the file.  What you should have done was OPEN the file after saving the copy to work with it.

Fortunately SolidWorks 2014 gives us the should have been there all along wonderful new option of saving as a copy, then opening.  Now when you select Save as, you are prompted with this dialog box giving you the option to either  Save as, Save as Copy, or Save as Copy and Open.

Even if you have checked “Don’t show again” in the lower left, you still have the option to save as copy and open in the bottom section of the typical save window.  Now, when you save as copy, the file will open automatically for you to work on.

In addition, to make file name edits even quicker, you can now include referenced documents for renaming with either a prefix or suffix.  This could be accomplished in the past, but had to be done in another window; now it can be done directly from the Save window.

While this isn’t a very flashy new enhancement, it’s honestly one of my favorites because SolidWorks has taken a process that has been around for years, and made it far more user friendly.

Want to see more new features in SolidWorks 2014? Check out our YouTube channel.

If you have any further questions about these steps, feel free to call Hawk Ridge Systems Technical Support at 877.266.4469 (US) or 866.587.6803 (Canada) or email us at support@hawkridgesys.com.