How do I…

Lock a group so nobody changes it by accident

Lock a group of devices or an annotation session for everyone on the plan, click through it, and unlock it again.

Where to find it: right edge › Equipment › the padlock beside a group's eye — or left edge › Annotations › the padlock beside a session's eye

A lock keeps a whole group from being selected or changed until someone unlocks it. On a crowded drawing, lock the speakers, then work on what is beneath them.

Lock a group of devices

Open Equipment on the right edge.
On the group's row — the row with the eye — press the padlock. Its tooltip reads Lock for everyone.

The padlock closes on every member's screen at once; the devices stay put and print as before. The surround group has its own row, covering the devices in surround zones, and Conduit one padlock for every conduit.

Lock an annotation session

Open Annotations on the left edge.
On the session's row, press the padlock beside its eye.

A locked session takes no new marks, so it cannot be the one you are drawing in. If it was, drawing stops and a message says so; words you were typing at that moment are written first. It cannot be renamed or deleted until it is unlocked — Rename and Delete are greyed out in its menu. Its eye still hides and shows it.

Work around what is locked

A click on a locked item goes through it to whatever is beneath, and a box, Shift and click, and ⌘A pass over it.
Arrow keys, Delete, the eraser, paste and the Properties controls cannot change it. If you try, a message names what is locked and where to unlock it.
Where a click lands only on something locked, one thing turns amber for a second or two to say which padlock unlocks it: that group's own when its list is open, and otherwise the tab that lists it — Equipment or Annotations — whose icon becomes a padlock. A row out of sight scrolls into view. No panel opens by itself.
Nothing is outlined under the pointer over a locked item either. Pointing at its row still outlines it on the sheet, and a right-click on it names it with a padlock beside the name. That list has no padlock button: choosing the line opens the item read-only, with Unlock at the top.
A lock does not hold stacking order: something locked can still be brought to front or sent to back.
Placing or pasting another device of a locked group is refused; the rest of a paste still lands.

To read a locked device, choose it from its row in Equipment: it is outlined on the drawing and Properties shows its details, read-only, with Unlock at the top.

Unlock

Press the padlock again — its tooltip reads Unlock for everyone — or choose Unlock in Properties. Anyone who can edit can unlock; members who can only view cannot. See roles.

What a lock does not block

Hiding and showing, deleting a whole sheet, saving a view, copying and renumbering all work as usual. Changing a sheet's icon size resizes every icon on it, locked ones included, and restoring a saved version restores everything.

Locking is not an undo step, and undo never unlocks anything. An undo or redo that would change something locked — or its connections — is refused with the same message, unless the only thing it changes is stacking order. While a refused step is next in line, undo waits: unlock the group, undo, and lock it again.

A row in Equipment shows a dimmed closed padlock when only some of its icon types are locked; pressing it locks the rest.