I want to explain my process here and then explain what I think I want to do. I'm just looking for some feedback to make sure I am going about this correctly.

We are using a third party add-in that works off of a system of template folders. In each folder is an assembly or part or both. This is accompanied by a drawing.

When a users selects this template while designing, it copies the folder and all of the content to their project directory and renames it for the project they are working on, then renames all of the files inside.

The problem I see with this method is that these are not assembly / part / drawing template files. They are actually solidworks files and subject to being outdated.

As it stands, we now have hundreds of templates designed. This has happened over the course of years and what the standards were back then, have evolved over the years and what we are left with is a snapshot in time. Things like drawings suffer the worst - drawing units, drawing fonts, dim styles, center marks, bent leader length, title blocks and many more little things have been modified over the years.

What we are left with are hundreds of folders that are out of date to our current standard. I would like to bring all of these folders up to date, and being a coder - of course I want to do this in code. So I can run it again if need be.

I have tried design checker and task scheduler and a couple other options and it can catch "Some" of these discrepancies, but not all and I would still have to open each folder one at a time, review the drawing and make the changes by hand.

Now.. for the project I am thinking about:

I want to collect this directory, iterate through each folder and basically output an up to date set of files using the settings I programmatically configure.

Do you think the best stab at this is opening existing drawing files and modifying them? or to create a "master" drawing file containing all of my settings. Then in code, open a copy of that master drawing, and then the target drawing. Grab all of the references and copy them to the master that holds the settings I want, Delete the old drawing or move it somewhere as a backup, and then rename the copied master to the original targets name.

Has anyone done something like this? thoughts? I suppose I can go either direction, I am just looking for the path of least resistance.