Thumbnail view in Windows Explorer

I have noticed recently that using thumbnail view in Windows Explorer
occasionally makes it easier to find stuff in Solidworks folders. This could
be really handy for non SW workstation users, like service personnel. I
suspect that the presence of "thumbs.db" file in a folder makes thumbnail
view of SW files possible.

It seems that, on workstations not equipped with SW, the thumbnail view of
SW files is not available.
This also seems to be true with SW Viewer (but no SW) installed.

Is there any way for non-SW equipped workstations to display SW files as
thumbnails?
Malcolm

 

Albert,

When SW is installed it places a handler for it's icons in the Windows
system. Therefore, you will only get thumbnails where SW is
installed.

Second, most people turn this off for performance reasons. In a
thousand part directory thumbnails is not a good idea.

Third, there are other tools that can get at this information. One
thing you could do if you really need this is to write a macro that:

1. Puts the model in a standard position and view.
2. Exports a jpeg with the same name as the file or configuration of
interest
3. Places the jpeg somewhere well known to you and the field personel.

The jpegs can be viewed with Windows Explorer if you put it in view
thumbnail mode. They can use SW explorer to actually view the files
and also to search for custom props.

 

What I have done here is install Copernic Desktop Search, it indexes the
specified folders for images, movies,...
AND, I have told CDS to look ONLY for images with the extension "sldprt",
movies as "sldasm", sounds ...

I get the previews for the "images with the extension sldprt", besides the
instant search function. It has been around for a couple of years now, and
those who use it could'nt do without it.

 

Copernic Desktop Search

Is that better than Windows Desktop Search when it comes to indexing a
big archive?

We have gotten the WDS with SW2007 and it still kept increasing in
size dramatically over 3-4 weeks making a 50 gb index file and slowing
the system down much.
So I have removed it from all our systems.

What you describe with CDS sounds like it might work, since it only
indexes it as images and not the features etc. within the file.

Can you confirm that is how it works?

 

Can't tell as I havn't tried WDS, but here we must have 10k+ SW docs, and no
impact on perfs that I could tell.

Yes, the only thing it cares about is the extension of the file. Besides,
it it can find a thumbnail inside, it displays it.

Really it is now a tool I could hardly do without, you should give it a try.

 

Something is wrong there. Even the inferior WDS shouldn't be creating a
50GB index. I have a co-worker who is using WDS, and he likes it.

I'm using Copernic to index "*.*" on all of on C: (~90GB ), and the index
folders are about 1GB.

Even Copernic hasn't been perfect for me. A few months ago I had to do a
clean reinstall of Copernic because it got confused and pegged the CPU
whenever I wasn't using the computer.

As I recall, the advantages of Copernic over WDS were these:
-ability to index ANY file type (*.*)
-search as you type
-pause indexing while working

That was a few months ago. IIRC, WDS has been updated once or twice since
then.