In our work flow we create drawings and revisions then save them to a Shop Drawings folder as PDFs to give everyone else access to them. At this point the existing PDF is saved, with the revision letter subscript, to an Obsolete Drawings folder for the records and then is overwritten in the Shop Drawings folder with the new revision. The problem occurs when making a revision of an existing drawing. If anyone else in the company has the PDF of the existing PDF we are unable to save the new drawing in the Shop Drawings folder. The problem can exist if someone only has the file selected in Windows Explorer but not opened. Sometimes we have to wait a few days to be able to save the revised drawing which can result in forgetting to do it at all.

     Does anyone have a way to resolve this problem short of sending out an email blast company wide to get the file closed? How does PDM handle saving the released PDFs?