Integration with Other Applications > Windchill Workgroup Manager Documentation > Creo Illustrate > Working with PDM Actions > PDM Actions in Windchill > Locking and Unlocking Objects in the Workspace
  
Locking and Unlocking Objects in the Workspace
You can lock an object to avoid unintentional modifications of working copies of data in your Workspace. When you lock an object in the Workspace, its status becomes read-only in both the Workspace and the Creo Illustrate session, and the object cannot be overwritten until it is unlocked. Locking is a Workspace feature; it is not available in Commonspace, and has no effect on Commonspace or copies of data in other users’ Workspaces.
The Lock command is available in the Windchill Workgroup Manager client user interface. To lock an object, select the object and click File > Lock. The object becomes read-only, and is marked as such by a status icon in the General status column. To unlock a locked object, click File > Unlock. The Check Out command automatically removes the lock from an object.
* 
You can set the Automatically lock objects added to workspace preference to Yes to lock all objects, by default, as they are added to the Workspace. To lock only objects you do not have Modify access for, you can set the preference workspace.autolock.for.no.modify.permission=yes in the wgmclient.ini file
When you lock an object which is modified in session, the object does not become read-only. You must lock an object before modifying the object in session.