How to Set Up Dropbox to Work With Solid Edge

We have already covered some of the reasons to use Solid Edge with Dropbox or a similar cloud provider. It does have some limitations, such as the requirement to use Solid Edge Data Management, or work in an unmanaged environment.

There were issues reported on the Solid Edge forum with using Dropbox on teams of over 4 members, it may be worth investigating that these have been resolved if your team exceeds this (Microsoft OneDrive may be a better solution in this case).

1. Install Dropbox

Go to https://www.dropbox.com/install & select “Download Dropbox”. This will cause an installer to download in your browser. Select “Save File”.

When the download is complete, double click on “DropboxInstaller.exe” to begin installing Dropbox on your computer.

The Dropbox installer will then begin downloading all installation files necessary onto your computer & complete the installation process.

With Dropbox installed sign into or set up your Dropbox account. If you already have a Dropbox account any files you have on their servers will automatically begin syncing to your PC in the default Dropbox folder.

2. Why Set Up a Custom Location For Dropbox?

Technically, at this stage you’re done, Solid Edge will be able to work with Dropbox (provided you configure Solid Edge correctly).

You may notice that by default the working folder for Dropbox is:
C:\Users\YourUserName\Dropbox.

This is fine provided you only use Dropbox on a computer using the exact same username. If you used different usernames or wanted to collaborate with other people, Solid Edge may run into issues resolving links between assemblies and parts due to different folder structures.

Even if you don’t foresee the need to collaborate or use multiple computers, it is fairly effortless to implement at this stage and could prevent a time consuming transition in the future, should your requirements change. There is also the benefit that your working folder for Dropbox will become a shorter path, reducing the likelihood of encountering errors due to exceeding the maximum number of characters in a Windows file path.

3. Customise Dropbox Location

Go into your Dropbox preferences & move the Dropbox folder location.

Select the location Local Disk (C:)

Note: don’t create a folder called “Dropbox”, Dropbox will automatically create this.

That’s it, you’re good to go, provided other computers have set up Dropbox the same way, all you need to do now is to configure Solid Edge for working with Dropbox.