I have two people working on a project: a detailer and a designer. The designer has finished designing one of the sub-assys and has moved onto the next higher assembly that the sub-assy is a part of. The detailer would like to start detailing the parts in that sub-assy, but because my designer has it open in his next higher assembly the parts are locked and he (the detailer) can only work in read only.
I can set the "open referenced documents as read-only", but this seems to create the reverse problem: now my detailer can open the parts and work, but my designer cannot do any work on the assembly because all of the parts are read-only. Even if he right clicks on a part and says "open xxxx.sldprt" it still opens as read-only.
Where is the happy medium? How do others handle this? Would working the assembly in lightweight work because the parts are not being resolved? What does the "Allow multiple contexts for parts when editing in an assembly" check box do in the external references system options screen do?
PS - I'm using SWX 2003 sp4, but I can switch to 2004 immediately if that will solve my problems.