I'm continuing my discovery of Solidworks after leaving Creo and something amazes me a bit, hence my question here: Isn't it possible to delete a CAD file (in the sense of a file in Windows) FROM the Solidworks interface? I can't find anything in this sense, no tutorial, no function, nothing.
Should you bother with Explorer for that?? And if I'm looking for such a great function it's especially for assemblies: I saved in the " working directory" electronic boards with hundreds or even more components on them, where I extracted what I needed and now I would like to clean up and delete everything. In Creo for asm, I was offered to automatically delete all the parts making up the assembly (but not those in session if assembled), how convenient! #nostalgie
There, it would still be a huge loose to have to click one by one the parts in Explorer while being careful not to delete parts, plan, assembly of the rest of the project. I don't dare to imagine a software without that, is it me who is not looking in the right place, not well or with the wrong keywords?
To my knowledge this does not exist (yet: but you have this post that suggests you go and give this idea to SW:Solidworks 2026 Top Ten - #14 by A_R) .
The only workaround I see is to do your opening/cleaning manip in a temporary directory and then a copy tree of the cleaned assembly in the final directory: only the components used will be copied.
In addition, it is possible to leave open in SW only the files to be kept. Then go to the folder and delete all the files, the open ones will not be deleteable.
Hello Nicolas_PECHBERTY, There is something for that, but you have to have MyCAD tool, " Clean project ".=>
And it takes at least less than a second to clean up your assembly, project... That is to say that it moves to another directory (that you name), all parts, assemblies, sub-assemblies, which is not used in your business or project. then deletes this named directory.
Thank you A_R for your answer. Unfortunately I don't have that, only Solidworks (Premium).
And I understand that an external utility exists given the huge hole in the racket that there is regarding this software. It's quite crazy, there is some good in this one but there is also some very bad for the time being...
Interesting Cyril_F! It's a bit of a hassle to rely on Windows locking files but I'll try not to get more upset than that On the other hand, I'd better open all my head assemblies when it's time to... Thank you
mycad tools are subject to a Mycadtools subscription. Before I had the Mycadtools tools, I did as @Cyril_f , even if the mycad tools are indeed more appropriate.
