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Filenam conventions?

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Message 1 of 10
tmchenry
805 Views, 9 Replies

Filenam conventions?

We're trying to establish a naming convention for our CAD files.  I've seen several different conventions, each with their pros and cons, and I'm interested in people's thoughts on what is the best approach.

 

The only thing that's common among the different conventions I've seen is that the filename for the drawing derived from a part or assembly is usually same as that of the part or assembly, or related to it by a simple algorithm.

 

Here are some examples of conventions I've seen or used.

 

12345.ipt

 

The filename is simply the part number.

 

100-12345.ipt

 

The filename is the part number with a prefix identifying the type of part (100 for OTS, 200 for sheet metal, 300 for machined, etc.).  Sometimes this prefix is actually part of the formal part number.

 

100-12345=SCREW,M5X20,SHCS,SS.IPT

 

The filenam begins with the part number but then has a description added.  I didn't like this one when I first encountered it, but I gradually warmed up to it.  It makes for cumbersome filenames, but it's great for searching and it gives you a lot of information just in the filename.

 

Gubbin_Duplex_Unthreaded.iam

 

Here the filename is purely descriptive.  This has the advantage that you can name it before an item number is assigned, which is easier during the early phase of development when you might go through quite a few different "gubbins" that are later rejected.  But it's perhaps not quite as good later on, when everything has a part number.

 

That about covers the range of conventions I've seen.  I would say that I probably like the third one the best, even though it results in the longest filenames.  They're long, but also very useful.

9 REPLIES 9
Message 2 of 10
mcgyvr
in reply to: tmchenry

The "best" way is as follows.

1234.ipt

1234.iam

1234.idw

all stored in the same folder..

 

 

The reason I say "best" is to use the "open drawing" functionality in Inventor the idw must have the same filename as the ipt or iam. 

 

We use 10 digits for all our part numbers..

The first 2 for us represent something to us..

For example

02 = fasteners so a fastener might be 0212312345.ipt

All 02's go into the 02 folder.. all 04's go into the 04 folder,etc..

 

and I've even gone a step further and made a complete matrix for all of the 10 digits in each 2 digit group.. (beacuse I'm totally a nal) 

So I know a 0201xxxxxx is a phillips pan head fastener.. where the 2nd and 3rd digit is fastener head/drive type

and 020108xxxx is a phillips pan head #6-32 faster as 08 in the 5th and 6th digit is the thread size

 

 



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Inventor 2023 - Dell Precision 5570

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Message 3 of 10
swalton
in reply to: mcgyvr

Another reason to like mcgyvr's best method:

1. You can enforce unique filenames with Vault

2. With the proper version of Vault: Automatic Part Numbering.

 

 


@mcgyvr wrote:

The "best" way is as follows.

1234.ipt

1234.iam

1234.idw

all stored in the same folder..

 

 

Steve Walton
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Message 4 of 10
mcgyvr
in reply to: swalton


@swalton wrote:

Another reason to like mcgyvr's best method:

1. You can enforce unique filenames with Vault

2. With the proper version of Vault: Automatic Part Numbering.

 

 


I don't use vault so I'm glad that this method is how it should be done in vault too.. One day we will need vault.. 



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Inventor 2023 - Dell Precision 5570

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Message 5 of 10
swalton
in reply to: mcgyvr


@mcgyvr wrote:

I don't use vault so I'm glad that this method is how it should be done in vault too.. One day we will need vault.. 

If I were a stand-alone user, I would still think very hard about using Vault.  In the free version:

1. Copy-Design is very powerful, much better than Design Assistant. 

2. Same goes for Rename. 
3. Keeping design history with the ability to go back to any version that was checked-in to the Vault

4. Multiple copies of the data in case of drive failure:

    Workspace on the local machine

   Filestore on the Vault server machine

   Nightly backup from the Vault server, stored offsite

 

Steve Walton
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Message 6 of 10
pball
in reply to: swalton

We use sequential numbers based off the job number. So when we have a new project we get a job number from our database software thing (engineers don't really use it). So our part numbers are like.

12345-00-01 Main assembly
12345-01-01 Sub assembly
12345-01-02 Sub assembly inside 12345-01-01
12345-02-01 a different sub assembly inside the main

D12345-0001 part number 1
Message 7 of 10
mcgyvr
in reply to: swalton


@swalton wrote:

@mcgyvr wrote:

I don't use vault so I'm glad that this method is how it should be done in vault too.. One day we will need vault.. 

If I were a stand-alone user, I would still think very hard about using Vault.  In the free version:

1. Copy-Design is very powerful, much better than Design Assistant. 

2. Same goes for Rename. 
3. Keeping design history with the ability to go back to any version that was checked-in to the Vault

4. Multiple copies of the data in case of drive failure:

    Workspace on the local machine

   Filestore on the Vault server machine

   Nightly backup from the Vault server, stored offsite

 


None of those are needed here and not worth all the other "troubles" Ive heard about with Vault..

I don't copy designs... never needed versioning... and we have SOOO many backups going on here its insane..

IT had an issue a few months ago where multiple hard drives failed at the same time thus causing this company to loose the past 3+ months of data . Windows backup was reporting it was working but when needed there was nothing in there even though the backup file size was increasing as it should but neither IT or the smartest geeks from Microsoft could tell us what their backup program was actually doing or what went wrong..So now we backup multiple times a day using multiple backup tools..stored in multiple backup locations... Backups will never be an issue here anymore.. we backup the backups backup 🙂

 



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Inventor 2023 - Dell Precision 5570

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Message 8 of 10
cmharb
in reply to: mcgyvr

We have a spread sheet and pick the next available number. The number is meaningless. Details of the part/assembly are put in the iProperties. When we create a drawing of a part/assembly our drawing frame automatically puts the part number into the frame and names the drawing the same as the part. We show only one assembly/part per drawing.

 

For boms etc, the part number is always shown as this leads to the drawing, and its description so humans know what it is.

 

Files for a particular projects are in folders with the project name.

 

All fasteners etc come from the content centre and we have another folder with 'standard parts', ones that are not in the CC.

 

I will confess we do use vault and can therefore see the description in the vault browser so the filenames are arbitrary.

w7u-64sp1,iv14,intel.xeon.e5-2620 0 @2.00 2.00-32gb,gtx560-4gb
Message 9 of 10

Jonathan at Inventor Tales has a good article on this. http://www.inventortales.com/2013/10/making-sense-of-file-numbering-systems.html

Brendan Henderson
CAD Manager


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Message 10 of 10
pball
in reply to: brendan.henderson

We used to pick part numbers from a master list, but some times two people would end up using the same part. Also it was difficult to track down the original project a part was created for. So we switched to the project number based part numbers I spoke of in my previous post.

We don't use Vault which would probably make some of these issues moot, but just sharing my experiences with part numbering.

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