It’s also important to understand that when opening a parent document read-only (like an assembly or a drawing), the child components are not loaded read-only by default. You may also use the Check Read-only Files command to trigger this process manually. If the system detects changes to read only documents, you will be prompted and the Reload dialog will be opened to update the files in question. Go to System Options → Collaboration and click “Enable Multi-user Environment.” Then, enable “Check if files opened read-only have been modified by other users” and choose an appropriate time interval. If you happen to be as forgetful as I often am, consider enabling system options to automatically check for out of date read-only documents.

This indicates that the file has been updated since you last opened it, and saving any changes on your end will likely overwrite changes made by the other user: When in doubt, use the File → Reload command to check if another user has access, and most importantly, if there is a newer version of the file available on the disk. This can be especially dangerous, especially if another user with write access has already made design changes and since closed the part in question. It’s important to note that opening a SOLIDWORKS file using this method does not prevent you from making changes or overwriting the file! Instead, a message dialog will appear upon saving informing you of the document’s read-only status:Ĭlicking OK at this point will open the Save dialog as usual, and allow you to save without any further prompting. When opening a SOLIDWORKS file, for example, use the Open dropdown menu to open a file in read-only mode: In this post, we’ll cover the basics of using these read-only options, as well as some important differences between setting this option in SOLIDWORKS versus Windows.įor the uninitiated, read-only is an option that prevents a file from being changed or overwritten. Anyone who has experienced data loss certainly knows what true pain feels like, and while SOLIDWORKS PDM is our number one recommendation for collaborative file management, proper usage of read-only options can save you quite a bit of trouble in the interim. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of opening a SOLIDWORKS document, only to find that your last eight hours of hard work have just been wiped out by the intern.

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