Specialized Administration > Tailoring Business Objects > Object Initialization Rules Administration > Working with Object Initialization Rules > Object Numbering and Versioning > Object Versioning
  
Object Versioning
Versioning schemes define the labels, or identifiers, that are automatically applied as object versions are created in a Windchill solution and define the order in which the labels are applied.
For all Windchill solutions, a rules load file sets the initial versioning rules for parts, documents, and CAD documents. These rules are in effect for all parts, documents, and CAD documents created from within any context. However, there is no out-of-the-box user interface for revising parts, documents, and CAD documents that are created within a project or program context (if Windchill ProjectLink is installed).
PTC recommends that you establish one versioning scheme for all of your contexts and that you set the versioning scheme in the site context. The out-of-the-box versioning scheme is used to set the initial version of the document templates that are loaded during installation. Therefore, you should not change this scheme; however if you have unique versioning scheme requirements for other types of objects, you can set up alternate versioning schemes that then can be used.
* 
If you make any changes to a versioning scheme, ensure that the revision labels are unique within the entire series in a versioning scheme. Specifying the same label multiple times within a series leads to corrupt data.
* 
Ensure that the versioning scheme that you want used is in place before allowing users to create documents, CAD documents, and parts. Changing the versioning scheme after objects have been created can cause problems. If the scheme is changed in such a way that when revising an existing object, the current revision is not in the new versioning scheme, then an error occurs. For example, assume that an alphabetic scheme is in place when some objects are created and then the scheme is changed to an integer scheme. When the user tries to revise an object that is at version A, the operation fails because the new scheme does not have the alphabetic character A.
* 
For information about how to allow characters that are no longer in a versioning scheme in the revision labels of existing objects, see Changing Versioning Schemes.
You can view and edit the rules that are being used from the Object Initialization Rules table.
For detailed information about using object versioning in your Windchill solution, see Administering the Versioning of Parts, Documents, and CAD Documents.
The following sections provide some of the details on the out-of-the-box site versioning scheme, how to set up a versioning scheme, the rules format to use for versioning, and an example versioning rule.