When projects become larger and larger, managing the debug/release win32/win64 combinations may become a mess. It might be time to take some effort to reorganize the projects. Using the visual studio's macros may help to organize your complex projects.
Some important macros:
$(Configuration): debug or release
$(Platform): win32 or x64
$(SolutionDir): solution directory
$(ProjectDir): project directory
$(IntDir): intermediate files directory
$(OutDir): output files directory
more information see: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/c02as0cs.aspx
Generally we uses $(SolutionDir), $(ProjectDir), $(platform), $(Configuration) to form the $(IntDir) and $(Outdir) to instruct the visual studio where to put the compiled files and output files.
We may need to customize some macros to record the Include path and library path. To do that, first click the property page tab, and go to the project and right click to select Add new property sheet. Click Use macros and add your define variables for example:
$(MyLibDir) c:\mylib\$(Platform) and add them into the environment. Add the property sheet to all projects in your solution and you can use these macros the same as the system macros.