Using Document Groups to Get Organized

Has this ever happened to you? You’ve been deep into designing and developing a project, working furiously, and before you know it, you have multiple part files, a few assemblies, and some drawings open. It’s late, and time to call it a day, but you need all of these files open to continue working the next day. What do you do in this situation?

Leave it all open overnight and hope it doesn’t shut down or crash? Save it all and shut down, hoping you remember which documents you had opened. Will you remember what information was pertinent to your project? To help ease the pressure of remembering which files you have open, SOLIDWORKS introduced document groups in 2025.

What are Document Groups?

Document groups are standard sets of SOLIDWORKS files that you can save and recall later. As a new feature in SOLIDWORKS 2025, you can take everything you have open in your working session of SOLIDWORKS and designate a label to all the items you have opened.

Think of it as taking everything you’re working on at any point in time, putting it all in a box, and giving it a nice label. Then, when you need to open your five parts, two assemblies, and two drawings again, you simply have SOLIDWORKS recall all these items and open them for you at once by recalling the document group.

This saves you time and the extra clicks associated with opening all those individual documents manually one at a time. Document groups are groups of parts, assemblies, and drawings that can be recalled at the home screen for easy access.

Why are They Useful?

You can use document groups to create quick access to different projects you may need to recall often to work on. Perhaps you usually work on multiple projects at a time through the course of a month or a year.

You can use a document group to label them anything, such as the product name, client name, or even the due date of the project. Like having a favorite playlist ready to go, document groups help you quickly recall lists of files ready to go when you need them. No more spending the first part of your day fishing around for everything you were working on before.  Get right back into the flow with one click.

How Do You Create Document Groups?

To use a document group, you first need to create the group and give it a name. Then you can later recall the group and reopen all the files you had set aside.

To create a document group:

1. Click on the Window dropdown menu in your SOLIDWORKS toolbar.
2. Select Create Document Group.
   
   

   Using the Create Document Group tool

3. Give the document group a recognizable name.
4. Select the files you want to include in the group if you aren’t including all of the open files.
   

   Naming the document group

How Do You Use Document Groups?

Once the document group is saved, it is accessible from the SOLIDWORKS Welcome window. You can find it on the main Home page or in the Recent section.

Accessing document groups from the SOLIDWORKS Welcome window

By selecting the document group, it will reopen all of the files within the group. Keep in mind that the more files that are included in the group, the longer it may take to recall.

Why are SOLIDWORKS Document Groups Useful?

For your own personal organization and workflow sanity, document groups are key in making sure you can access what you need to get started working quickly and easily. Any tool that you can leverage to work smarter and more efficiently is something you want to make use of. By using SOLIDWORKS document groups, you can save time when reopening groups of files and focus your efforts on creating breakthrough designs.

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