{"id":2027,"date":"2010-10-25T04:07:08","date_gmt":"2010-10-25T12:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fcsuper.com\/swblog\/?p=2027"},"modified":"2010-10-23T13:56:58","modified_gmt":"2010-10-23T21:56:58","slug":"solidworks-question-why-does-opening-a-part-cause-others-to-open-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fcsuper.com\/swblog\/?p=2027","title":{"rendered":"SolidWorks question: why does opening a part cause others to open too?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0 Most people who encounter this behavior figure out that there are external references that link the files together.<\/p>\n

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).<\/p>\n

The answer?<\/h3>\n

SolidWorks is doing what it is supposed to do when you open one file, and then other external referenced files open automatically with it!\u00a0 This is intended behavior.\u00a0 It is also behavior that you can control at the system level.<\/p>\n

There is a setting in System Options<\/em> that allows you to tell SolidWorks how to handle external referenced files.\u00a0 It’s at Tools <\/em>pulldown>Options…<\/em>>System Options<\/em> tab>External References<\/em>.\u00a0 At that screen, the fourth line from the top says, “Load referenced documents:<\/em>” followed by a drop-down field with the following choices:<\/p>\n