Version control schemes define the labels, or identifiers, that are automatically applied as object versions are created and define the order in which the labels are applied. A rules load file sets the initial version control rules for documents and revisable entities. These rules are in effect for documents and revisable entities created from within any context. By default, version control is not enabled, and requires an administrator to change the property setting. When version control support is enabled, documents and revisable entities appear with version information throughout the system

PTC recommends that you establish one version control scheme for all of your contexts and that you set the version control scheme in the site context. The out-of-the-box version control scheme is used to set the initial version of the document templates that are loaded during installation. Therefore, you should not change this scheme, as changes to the scheme can lead to data corruption if revision labels are not unique.

PTC FlexPLM follows the out-of-the-box version control scheme for Windchill PDMLink. The default version control scheme for all objects is set in the site context and is a simple alphabetical scheme. Version identifiers are first assigned as a single letter. After all letters from A through Z have been assigned, the following series are used:

When a new view version of a part is created, the version in the new view starts a new version control scheme and the new view version inherits its content from the original revision in the ancestor view. In subsequent revisions of the new view version, the new version control scheme is followed and inheritance, or the predecessor for the version, is dependent on how the version was created.