Studies are always out of date -- any work flow suggestions?

[ryan-feeley]

I'm looking for workflow recommendations for using solidworks simulation. Whenever I use it to examine a few parts and an assembly or two, I find that I'm always revising say a part-level simulation with some small change like adding split lines to support a bearing connector or to create vertices at which I can put displacement sensors.

These are of course geometry changes, which invalidate simulations of any assemblies that use these parts.

So when I've used the tool to learn what I need to learn, I'm left with either out-of-date simulations that I can't reference in the future, or with needing to do final runs of "everything" to ensure I have up-to-date simulations using the latest geometry.

I know I can use configurations and derived configurations to limit the scope of changes, and avoid breaking other simulations, but that introduces its own overhead and can quickly balloon to many very similar configurations that different only to limp along existing assembly simulations.

What do people here recommend? Is there any preferred way to handle this, or is something where I just need to slog through it with careful planning to minimize repeated work.