Have you ever opened a particular SolidWorks file that caused other SolidWorks files to automatically open as well? This can be very frustrating if you want to open a signal part, but then 5 other parts load with it. Most people who encounter this behavior figure out that there are external references that link the files together.
Over the years, I’ve seen people give several types of responses for this behavior in SolidWorks. Some people simply live with the undesired behavior. Others may say, “the file is corrupt,” or “there’s a bug in SolidWorks.” Some people spend hours trying to resolve the cause of the behavior without success (me being one of them, many, many, many years ago).
The answer?
SolidWorks is doing what it is supposed to do when you open one file, and then other external referenced files open automatically with it! This is intended behavior. It is also behavior that you can control at the system level.
There is a setting in System Options that allows you to tell SolidWorks how to handle external referenced files. It’s at Tools pulldown>Options…>System Options tab>External References. At that screen, the fourth line from the top says, “Load referenced documents:” followed by a drop-down field with the following choices:
- Prompt – ask the user before opening referenced files
- All – open all referenced files every time
- None – never open referenced files
- Changed Only – only open referenced files if there is a change
As far as I have seen, Changed Only appears to be the SolidWorks default choice for this setting. To tell SolidWorks not to open external referenced files, change this setting to None. Save the setting by clicking OK button.
That’s it! I know, this seems like such a simple solution for something that may have been particularly frustrating.