Grandfather your duplicate file names

Let’s take another letter from our letter bag:

Dear Engineering Data Specialist Man,
I have been using PDMWorks Enterprise for a while now and have just found the option to not allow duplicate file names, but unfortunately I know there are hundreds of files already in the vault that have duplicate file names -especially from the legacy data I imported when I first started using PDMWorks Enterprise. Is it too late for me to turn this option on? Do I have to go through my entire vault looking for duplicate file names first? Please help quickly, I even lost a tennis match recently because of my concern! -- Ana I.


Thanks for the question. You are most wise to see the value of this option. Duplicate file names for some file types may be okay, but it is a terrible way of life if you have duplicate SOLIDWORKS file names. You’re luck. PDMWorks Enterprise only does the duplicate file name check when a file is leaving the private state. Thus if you have a file that has a duplicated file name already in the vault, you may continue to check in/out the file as normal. You can even create a file with a duplicate file name, you simply cannot check the file in for the first time!

P.S. Try not to roll your wrist so much on your backhand, you’ll get a lot more control.