Part locking is an ABAQUS/CAE function that prevents any changes to the features of a part. You can lock parts 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. In addition, ABAQUS/CAE automatically locks all the parts in a model when it upgrades a database from an older version of ABAQUS. Locked parts can be used in assemblies, and you can add or delete set and property definitions for locked parts; but you must unlock parts before you can add features to them or edit existing features.
Use Lock and Unlock in 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 version of ABAQUS. Locking the parts allows ABAQUS/CAE to regenerate only the assembly, thus completing the upgrade faster than if all the parts were also regenerated. You must unlock a part if you plan on modifying it. If you unlock a part that was locked by a database upgrade, ABAQUS/CAE regenerates that part and any assemblies that contain it. 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.
Locked
A user locked the part by using Lock in the Part Manager. Unlocking a part that was locked by a user allows you to edit the features of the part. In this case unlocking the part does not require regeneration of the part or assemblies because no feature changes were possible while it was locked.
Note: Part locking is not a security feature; any user can unlock and modify parts that were locked by another user.