In engineering and mechanical design, the need to exchange CAD data is required on a routine basis. Parametric CAD systems maintain links between files that can fail if the files are missing or if their locations have changed. this can cause a seemingly simple exchange of CAD data to become problematic when the CAD files are opened by the recipient.
To address this issue most CAD systems include provisions to prevent such errors when preparing models for backup or transfer. The instructions below describe the process for two of the most common CAD platforms, Creo(ProEngineer) and SolidWorks.