Get latest and read-only issue with SW 2023 SP3

[abhiramicg]

Hi all,
Our company recently upgraded to Solidworks 2023 SP3 and PDM (we use PDM standard currently). After the upgrade I have a few of the active users have issues with getting latest version of files on their machines. Users see that they get the "read only" message for files they checked out and usually when this happens, we notice that local version of the file is missing (ex: version shows '-/3'). Not sure what is causing this.
I have had the users checkin the files back, clear cache for those folders and then get latest. This seems to fix the issue. But sometimes major work is lost because they didn't realize the read-only flag was still there until it is time to save/check in.
One user had his file roll-back 20 versions on his PC after having checked in that file the previous day.
Anyone experiencing this? Any thoughts would be much appreciated

Thanks,
Abhi

[mp3-250]

Version -/3 in your example could be normal if the user has the file checked out, modified and saved on local disk only without checking in it. It means the local version of the file has not a corrispondent version on the server. This could happen also if the local cache is corrupted so the local file looks different from any of the server versions. (either current or past versions)
You can see the local version number (like 3/3) if the file is retrieved but not checked out, or checked out but not modified yet. The other case for "-" that is what you mention (no version retrieved locally), but the icon turns in a "?" (at least on PDM pro, I have never used standard)

[bnemec]

We had this a lot when users would open files in Solidworks, then go back to vault view or search tool instead of the SW PDM Add-in to do PDM actions, especially check out. There are settings in PDM Pro that will block users from checking files in or out when the file is open.

What it boils down to is if the file is open in Solidworks when user does check out, the PDM client process cannot change the file (read only flag included) because that "file is locked by another process". In my experience PDM barely complains about it and does all the checking out stuff on SQL server, but doesn't update file in local cache (remove the read only flag). It's no different than two users trying to open the same doc on a network share, except this is two processes on the same host trying to edit the same file at the same time, and PDM more or less masks the normal error dialog that we are used to seeing from word or excel etc.

Did you try looking at the checked out file in file explorer to see if the read only flag was set? If it is and the file is clearly checked out (other workstations concur that it is) then just uncheck that flag on the workstation that has the file checked out.

I don't know what all options PDM standard includes, but if it has SW PDM Add-in, try to get users to use it for PDM tasks. Also in the group that has checkout permissions, go to group Properties, Warnings, select Check Out from the drop down and check the box that says "The file is open in another application", that will block checking out files that are locked by another process.

[abhiramicg]

@bnemec That option is already checked in our vault .

[mp3-250]

make sure your users have the multi user environment option unchecked inside solidworks system options.
it shall not be used with pdm