The Read-Only Assistant is an informational and interactive menu comprised of five sections related to your open document:

Section	Description
Document Status	Displays the current document status for unmanaged and managed documents. Legend Available In Work In Review Released Baselined Obsolete Driven reference Documents managed with Teamcenter display the Teamcenter status. Insight XT managed documents use the status: Working, In Review, In Approval, Released, and Obsolete.
Messages	Displays messages that are not interactive, but update upon refresh.
Command	Displays commands available to you. This section updates upon refresh. Notify Me When Available The read-only document is polled every 30 seconds to determine when it is available for write access. Once available, you must close your read-only document and reopen it with write access. Save As Saves the active document to a new name, folder, or format. Save Copy As Saves a copy of the document with a new name, folder, or format. Revise Creates or displays revisions of the active document. Take Ownership Removes the driven reference status from the foreign CAD document and enables the addition of geometric value to the item revision.
Request write access	Changes the access to the document to writable as soon as the document is available.
Refresh	Queries the document status and displays the time and date of the last refresh. The time and date format uses the Windows Regional and Language Options.

You can use the Read-Only Assistant to access commands that are available to you based on your current document status. Pressing Esc hides the Read-Only Assistant, or you can close the Assistant by clicking the X.

You can save the selection to open documents read-only by clicking Save As Default on the Open File dialog box. The selection becomes the default the next time the Open File dialog box is displayed. The next document you open has Open as Read-Only automatically set for you. Documents opened from the startup screen option Recent Documents, from the Cache Assistant, from Windows Explorer, or using the Open shortcut option, are opened using the settings you last saved as your default.

In contrast, any command that creates a new document (Save As, Revise, Create Drawing, Create Assembly) automatically opens a writable document regardless of your default setting. Checking out a document in the Teamcenter Rich Client and then opening it in Solid Edge with Teamcenter enabled, also opens the file with write privileges regardless of your default setting.

There are some important concepts to be familiar with when you are working with documents that are opened read-only. You can only edit the most recent version of the document. This prevents you from having the document opened as read-only, and another user opening the document, editing it, and then closing it making your document not the most current version. In a managed document, the version is tracked by the document management system. However, in unmanaged documents, if the document you have open is not the latest version, you will receive a message that write-access is not available.

Another important concept relates to opening documents that contain references to other Solid Edge documents, such as when you are working with assemblies. When you request to open an indirect document, the indirect document is opened using the value of the Open As Read-Only check box of the parent, or direct document, and the selected radio button First level read-only or All levels read-only.

• Open a Solid Edge document

• Open a managed document

• Opening and saving Solid Edge documents

• Open command

• Take Ownership command