Integration with Other Applications > Windchill Workgroup Manager Documentation > CATIA V5 > User > PDM Actions for CATIA V5 > Locking and Unlocking Objects in the Workspace
  
Locking and Unlocking Objects in the Workspace
Locking a workspace object assigns it a read-only status in the workspace and in the CATIA V5 design session. The Lock and Unlock actions are only available from the Windchill Workgroup Manager embedded browser. They are not available in CATIA V5. Also, their use is only supported from an active workspace.
You can lock an object for any of the following reasons.
• To avoid inadvertent modification.
• To reduce the number of times that the Conflicts window is presented for objects that are not intended to be modified.
• To give you better visibility into the changes made implicitly by the CAD application. For example, unplanned or unexpected changes required during regeneration or rebuilding.
• To prevent the object from being overwritten.
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You can use the preference Workspace > Add to Workspace and Check Out > Automatically lock objects added to workspace to lock all objects by default, as they are added to the workspace.
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• Read-only object status is a property of the local cache, whether the workspace is online, offline, or portable. There is no notion of a locked object in the server-side workspace (which is viewed in standalone browser) or the commonspace.
• The CAD worker ignores the Automatically lock objects added to workspace preference and successfully publishes the CAD documents, which are locked.