How to See Every Assembly That Uses a Part in SOLIDWORKS PDM

Before you change a part, you want to know everything it affects. SOLIDWORKS PDM’s Where Used tab shows the direct parents, but on a large product structure you also need the parents of those parents, all the way to the top-level machine.

The faster way: whereusedtree

PDMShell’s whereusedtree builds the full recursive tree for one file, or for every file found by a search:

# one part
whereusedtree -filePath "C:\Vault\Parts\Bracket.SLDPRT"

# limit the depth
whereusedtree -filePath "C:\Vault\Parts\Bracket.SLDPRT" -depth 3

# every assembly in this folder, exported to CSV
whereusedtree -search "%.SLDASM" -depth 5 -csv whereusedtree.csv

What you get

• A tree in the session output, level by level
• A CSV with the root, child and parent of every link, the folder paths, the level and the full chain
• Circular parent chains detected and flagged as Circular
• A default depth of 10 levels, adjustable with -depth

When to use it

• Impact analysis before an engineering change
• Finding which top-level products need a new revision
• Checking that an old part is really unused before you archive it

Try it on your own vault

Start a free 7-day trial of PDMShell, see plans and pricing, or read the whereusedtree reference. Questions? Book a short call with our team.