Understanding work areas

A work area is a subdivision of the Main area. It is a dedicated workspace where you can make revisions to documents that have something in common, such as a project or an engineering change order. A work area can contain other work areas, called subwork areas.

To use a work area, you assign documents to it from the Main area. While you are working in the work area, the original revisions of the documents remain unchanged in the Main area for others to view without being able to change them; the documents are locked against change while they are assigned to the work area. When you have completed your work, you can then release the documents back to the Main area to become the latest approved revisions. You may have many different work areas active at any time, and each one may behave in a different manner.

You create work areas from work area templates whose configuration defines the behavior of the work area. This behavior includes the work area’s workflow and its Work Isolation Mode (WIM). A work area’s workflow can be simple or complex and affects all documents contained within it. A work area cannot change from one workflow state to another unless all documents within it have been released from their respective workflows.

Similar to the Main area, work areas may be configured in one of two ways: with Work Isolation Mode (WIM) enabled or cleared.

If WIM is cleared, you can modify documents using workflows. Documents under revision are visible to others.

If WIM is enabled, you can modify documents using only the Create Working Copy and Submit Working Copy commands. Documents under revision are not visible to others.