Editable vs. Non-Editable?

[John.schmidt.212444]

I'm having trouble understanding the functionality behind the "Editable" & "Non-Editable" designations for elements and worksets, and how "Relinquish All Mine" works with them.

Can anyone help me understand how these features work & how they are to be used?

[BIMTom]

Editable and Non-editable refer to worksets or elements. Editable means that you have them and no one else can edit them. Non-editable means no one has them and anyone can edit them.

It's a little backwards.

Relinquish all mine lets go of anything you have borrowed, but have not edited or that you have saved to central and want to let go of anything you already changed.

Does that make sense?

[DaveP]

I kind of wish they'd just get rid of the "Non-editable" designation.

It's a hold over from pre-Revit 6.1. Before that version, you needed that make an entire Workset Editable before you could do anything with the Element in that Workset. Since the advent of Element borrowing, making a Workset Editable is not really the best workflow any more.
If you make a Workset Editable, it means that you own everything on that Workset, and no one else can edit anything on it.

Plus newbies (no insult intended) are confused by the "Not Editable" on the Worksets drop-down.

[Chad Smith]

While I understand the argument for the confusion the "Editable" label can have, you will find that it is still very much correct within the context of the dialogue box.
This is a Worksets dialogue box, and as such it is dealing with entire Worksets. Maybe to help confusion, it could be renamed to something like "Check Out". Something not so direct might make users refer to the help file to read about its use. The label "Editable" has a more defined meaning which can be easily misconstruded.

I do on the other hand agree that the "Non-editable" in the drop down is confusing.

I think it is more a training issue. Since element borrowing, the average user shouldn't really even need to go into the Worksets dialogue, with the exception to control the Opened setting. Users should be trained to use the Worksets toolbar in 2009, and in a more frustrating approach, the Collaborate tab in 2010.

[DaveP]

I kind of like that idea about "Check Out".
That way, rather than reading
"(Not Editable) Workset1" 95% of the time, it could read
"(Checked Out) Workset1)" or maybe, if the Factory really wants to geek out,
"(pwned) Workset1".
My other issue with (Not Editable) is that the ( ) portion takes up 15 characters in a very limited dialog, which means you often can't even read the name of the current Workset. That, combined with the fact that is the LACK of (Not Editable) that really means something, leads me to wish that the default would be changed.