I was wondering if someone can give me a run down on the best way to create a centerlized type place to store standard parts and drawings in a way that people can modify them for their own personal drawings but it won't affect the base drawing on the main server everyone pulls the parts from.

For example I wanted to create a folder for I-beams and making all the standard sizes. Is it possible to put that in one location on a server and allow people to pull them off and use them in their own drawings with different lengths without it changing the length of everyone else using that same part? I mean alternatively I thought you could add a configuration to the part and just change the exruded length for each length you needed, but It's not possible to have configurations of different lengths of the same extrusion, is it? To do so would you have to add extruded cuts and lop of how much you needed for each length in each configuration?

If anyone has a guide or tips / help on how these types of things are accomplished, I'd really appreciate it to get a better understanding of it.