Locking a design
Why a lock exists, and that the service refuses, not only the page.
Reviewed
What this is for
Keeping a quote reproducible. Nothing on a locked design can change, and the refusal holds however the design is reached - the page, Generate wiring, a datasheet swap. Greying the buttons is not the whole of it.
Unlock to edit again. That is a different operation from deleting, and from duplicating.
Steps
- Open Design on the rail. Lock this design sits with rename, duplicate and delete.
- Once locked, the button reads Unlock this design, the top bar says Locked, and a notice says nothing on it can change. Every commit, every generate, every placement is refused. The wiring controls grey out and the undo arrows go dark; the drawing tools do not, and an edit made with them is refused when it saves, with a message naming the locked design.
- A locked design still opens. Viewers and a guest share can read it. They cannot write it either, for a different reason (read-only), and the two refusals are not the same.
- Duplicate first if you need a copy you can still edit. The duplicate is unlocked. The original stays the one the quote was frozen against.
- Some things block locking, not generation: an inverter family that needs optimizers with none chosen, a battery inverter carrying an array, or a component whose datasheet lacks the figures the simulation or the string sizing needs. The refusal names each one. You can see the schedule; you cannot make the design a deliverable until it can be built.
Tips and common mistakes
- Do not unlock, tweak, and forget to lock again before the next PDF. The old quote is then quietly a different array.
- A stale electrical layout on a locked design cannot be regenerated until you unlock. The outputs page says which.
- Delete is disabled when this is the only design. A project with no design is a different kind of empty.