What is part and assembly locking?

Part and assembly locking is an Abaqus/CAE function that prevents any changes to the features of a part or to the features of the assembly. You can lock parts or the assembly to prevent accidental changes, such as when sharing a model with other Abaqus users or when working on a model that contains many similar parts. You must unlock a part or the assembly if you plan on modifying it.

Note:

Part and assembly locking is not a security feature; any user can unlock and modify parts and assemblies that were locked by another user.

You can click mouse button 3 on a part or on the assembly in the Model Tree and use the menu that appears to lock and unlock the feature. A padlock before the feature name in the Model Tree indicates that a part or the assembly has been locked by the user or by a database upgrade. For more information, see Using the Model Tree to manage features.

Alternatively, you can use the Part Manager to lock or unlock any part in a model. If the part is unlocked, the Status field is empty in the Part Manager. If the part is locked, the Status field indicates one of two conditions:

Locked (Database upgrade)

Abaqus/CAE locked the part automatically while upgrading the model from a previous release of Abaqus.

Locked

A user locked the part using the Model Tree or the Part Manager.

Abaqus/CAE automatically locks the assembly and all the parts in a model when it upgrades a database from an older release of Abaqus. Locking the assembly and the parts allows Abaqus/CAE to complete the upgrade faster than if the assembly and all the parts were also regenerated. If you unlock a part that was locked by a database upgrade, Abaqus/CAE regenerates that part. Similarly, if you unlock an assembly that was locked by a database upgrade, Abaqus/CAE regenerates the assembly.

Warning:

If a part is locked due to a database upgrade, you should unlock the part prior to making any changes to set or property definitions. If you unlock the part after making modifications, your changes can become invalid when Abaqus/CAE regenerates the part.

If you unlock a part that you locked with the Model Tree or the Part Manager, Abaqus/CAE does not regenerate the part because it could not be modified while it was locked. Similarly, Abaqus/CAE does not regenerate the assembly when you unlock it after locking it with the Model Tree. If a part that you unlock fails to regenerate, both the locked version and the unlocked version are retained. You can recreate missing features on the unlocked version of the part and use it to replace the locked part throughout the model.

You can instance a locked part and use it in the assembly. In addition, you can add or delete set or property definitions to a locked part or to a locked assembly. However, you must unlock a part or the assembly before you can add features to it or edit existing features.