Imagine you have the Enterprise PDM SolidWorks addin tweaked perfectly. Everyone in your company should have the settings exactly as you have them. Is there a way to share your settings? Yes…but it involves editing the registry.

Great Aunt Eleanor always scolds me for playing with Windows registry keys. She says that if I want to change the registry, I should call her and let her do it, or at the very least I should make a backup first. Though I think she spends too much time playing Warcraft, she is correct. Directly editing the registry is risky if you don’t know what you are doing, so please don’t try this at home unless you are a professional -or at least play one at work.

The options are stored under the following registry keys:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SolidWorks\Applications\PDMWorks Enterprise\ConisioCAD\SolidWorks
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SolidWorks\Applications\PDMWorks Enterprise\PDMSW\Options

Export these two keys from your machine (and if you really want to show off your .reg hacking skills combine them into one file) and pass around to your friends. Your friends double click on that registy file and instantly they are just as good as you.

<insert standard disclaimer “Make your backup first.odt” of registry editing here >