Diplom Enineer, Project Eng.

My humble recommendations:

Use a unique part number and drawing for each part. Never combine parts on a drawing.

Make the part number and drawing number the same. Make the assembly number and the drawing number the same.

Set up a prefix system. For example 1xxxxxx could refer to purchased parts, 2xxxxxx to machined parts, 3xxxxxx to painted or plated parts, 4xxxxxx to weldments, and so on. Do not use suffixes since they'll tend to get lost over to the right of the feature manager in long names.

Do not use the paper size as any part of the number.

Use configurations for variations of the part; don't use configurations to, for example, add plating to a part.

Don't put project info into the part/assy number or name. You can easily control that in an Excel BOM.

And my very best recommendation: Find the URL of the Phoenix SW user group and ask them. If you can't find them, go to www.Eng-Tips.com, sign up (it's free) and go to the SolidWorks forum and ask there. If they contradict anything I say, go with their recommendation and ignore mine (they're smarter).

TVP45 has some very good recommendations.

I would like to put a slight twist on one of them. A system where 1xxxxxx means this group and 2xxxxxx means that group is very helpful for us humans. This is often referred to as "smart numbers". But, there will come a day when somehow a drawing will either be in the wrong group or the logical grouping will somehow fail to work properly. Thus, I suggest the BOM database and other systems be set up to accept "dumb numbers".

99+% of the drawings/parts should comply with the "smart numbers". Every now and then a special case will pop up. Having all systems and databases set up to use "dumb numbers" (essentially randomly assigned) will allow the problem item to be entered into the system.

The overall system should look like it is a "smart number only" system. But, you don't want to be dead in the water when an unexpected problem child pops up.

Bruce