Components have to be uniquely identified in some way to avoid information collision. Having different things with the same unique identifier could lead to confusion and inconsistency and create a nightmare for stock inventory or accounting in the real world, but also for file naming or database query in the virtual world for example.

Components

As discussed in the article about the Components Identification, the Manufacturer name and the Manufacturer Reference are enough to uniquely identify something.

External components already have their own Manufacturer Reference and, of course, their Manufacturer name but for Internal components (see the article about the Definition of the Word Component) you are the one that have to assign them. The Manufacturer is obviously your company name but the Manufacturer Reference has to be created.

This is where you need to generate a serial number, a unique string of characters that is uniquely assigned to a specific component and never repeated anywhere else in your company. The reason you want it unique is because whether you sale these components directly or have them part of a machine, you and your customer probably want a way to reference a particular component and distinguish from another.

To create your internal Manufacturer Reference, you can use a serial number generator, or just manually keep track of the already assigned numbers or if you use miniPDM, you can use the included Unique Identifier Generator

The problem is that using the combination of Manufacturer Reference – Manufacturer is not super convenient to handle. It is two different variable value sin your SolidWorks’ properties, it is two columns in your BOMs, etc…

It would also look weird to keep repeating your own company name on each tag of your internal components.

And last but not least, when the component’s properties are used outside of SolidWorks in an ERP system, a PDM software like miniPDM or basically any software with a database backbone, this is much easier to define something by only one value instead of two.

The solution is to use a third variable value: the Unique Identifier.
For the Internal component that’s easy, you have already generated a Unique Identifier for your Manufacturer Reference .
For the External components, you cannot use the Manufacturer Reference as Unique Identifier because nothing guaranties that two manufacturer don’t have the exact same Manufacturer Reference. You will have to generate one like you did for your Internal components

At this point you now have the following component properties:

• External components
  • Unique Identifier = your internal identifier of this component
  • Manufacturer Reference = identifier used by the Manufacturer
  • Manufacturer = name of the company making that component
• Internal components
  • Unique Identifier = your internal identifier of this component
  • Manufacturer Reference = Unique Identifier
  • Manufacturer = your company name

Files Names

Now that you have a unique component identification policy for both External and Internal components, you still need to save these models somewhere and for that you need a file name.

As discussed in the article about the Files Naming, you don’t want to use a pair of Manufacturer Reference – Manufacturer value as file name. It is good for tracking and ordering in your BOM but not for a file name as it would restrict too much what this file can contain and would limit the CAD assembly flexibility.

So you need a Unique Identifier for the file name to be able to put whatever you want in this file, a Single component or a Family of components. For more information, see the article about the Components Families. But you also want to be able to put an Internal or an External component in it.

The solution is simply to name the files after the Unique Identifier. This way you unsure uniqueness of the file names and simplicity of their short chain of characters without any rules and not giving any explicit information.

Wait a minute, that works for Single components but how does it work for a Family of components? Do you just name the file after the Unique Identifier of the first member of the family?

This is where the concept of Document Number is needed. In SolidWorks, files like components are just a boxes that can contain many different things (see the article about the Definition of the Word Component).

The first thing you create when you make a new Internal component or download an External component CAD (see the article about the CAD Importation) is the file name. So you actually have to reverse what we did before and start with the Document Number instead of the Manufacturer Reference:

• External components
  • Document Number = your internal unique identifier
  • Unique Identifier
    • Single = Document Number
    • Family = your internal unique identifier per each configuration
  • Manufacturer Reference = identifier used by the Manufacturer
  • Manufacturer = name of the company making that component
• Internal components
  • Document Number = your internal unique identifier
  • Unique Identifier
    • Single = Document Number
    • Family = your internal unique identifier per each configuration
  • Manufacturer Reference = Unique Identifier
  • Manufacturer = your company name