Hello,

I would like to ask your experience about using Toolbox in Solidworks. I have these doubts:

1. Now I am still on SW 2014. If I open a project created in SW 2012 or 2013, all toolbox elements are destroyed in size. The mates are correct, the geometry is fine, it is just that every bolt, washer, nut or any other element is lost in it's size. Usually they are really huge, like M30 or smth. like that, although they were created and should be sizes M6/8/10 etc.

2. A colleague told me, that he had the same issues when he created projects with SW 2012 and then migrated to SW 2013. All the sizes of toolbox elements were lost.

3. As I understand (I may be wrong, please correct me): when the toolbox element is created in assembly, the toolbox element file itself is changed, or some system file is created somewhere for every single instance of toolbox element in every single assembly. I think so because we wanted to make Toolbox files read-only, bet then no Toolbox element could had been inserted into an assembly. There had been an error message in the top of Toolbox configuration publisher window, in the yellow background, saying "failed to create ... something" or similar. So, this makes it obligatory for every user to have write access for Toolbox directory, bringing security issues. Anybody can accidentally damage something.

I have heard another couple opinions of engineers stating toolbox being risky, so they avoid using it. Of course, it is brilliant as long as it works, but when everything, all projects, get destroyed after a Solidworks update, or some user accidentally damages a sketch of a Toolbox element, everything becomes worthless.

Today, we are using a separate part file for every different bolt, nut etc. It makes it more difficult to use, but completely reliable. You just have to save the file to newer version after SW version upgrade. I was thinking to spend some time to create configuration publishers for most used bolts/nuts parts, and save them as a regular part file, instead of using toolbox. This way it should work being read-only, and should successfully survive SW upgrades, as any other SW part.

Please share your experience with Toolbox, concerning software updates and writable access to their files, and possibly any other issues you had. Any suggestions also welcome