There must be a way around this but I have yet to find it, do you know?

All Parts, Assemblies and their associated Drawings are in the Pdmworks vault at their relevant revisions.

The drawings have revision tables the specify the reason for the latest revision change.

Example:-

Wip-01        First check-in                                         14-04-14

A-01           Released                                                14-05-14

A-02           Changed Hole1 from M8 to M10            14-06-14

The A-02 is the latest revision and this works great until the yearly Solidworks version update say 2014 to 2015.

Now all the Parts, Assemblies and drawings show as old versions and need to be rebuilt.

I cannot check-in at current revisions or read from file as this overwrites the reason(Note) for the A-02 in the revision table. If I leave the reason (Note) blank, the blanks overwrites the reason (Note) also! 

Re-issuing all the drawings again at a higher revision requires the ASME and the PED inspectors to re-sign every coded drawing and there's a lot!!

Am I missing something or is this the way Solidworks, does not work in saving time??

Any input will be gratefully received if it can over come this simple but very time consuming error.

Pete