About Locking Documents Stored in Autodesk Docs

When you are working in Autodesk Civil 3D 2025, and you open a drawing that is stored in Autodesk Docs, the document is automatically locked so no one else can edit it while you have it open.

Note: If you are working in Civil 3D 2020.1 or a previous version of Civil 3D, or any version of AutoCAD or an AutoCAD-based product, locking is not automatic when you open a drawing that is stored in Autodesk Docs.

Locking in Civil 3D

When you open most types of unlocked documents from Autodesk Docs in Autodesk Civil 3D 2025, they are automatically locked so that only you can edit them. A document is locked regardless of the method of opening it (such as opening a document from the Start tab or from the connected drive in Windows Explorer).

While you have the document locked, your changes will be saved to Autodesk Docs and other team members working in the Autodesk Docs project can open the document read-only.

When you close the document, the document will be unlocked and someone else can open it for editing.

When you save a new drawing to Autodesk Docs, it is locked automatically after the synchronization process is completed.

The following icons are displayed on the Prospector tab of Toolspace indicate the locked status of open drawings:

• : The drawing is open for edit, and is locked by you.
• : The drawing is open read-only, and is locked by someone else.
• : The drawing is open read-only, and is not locked by anyone else.

The following icons are displayed on the Autodesk Docs page of the Start tab:

• : The drawing is locked by you. When you open a document to edit it, the document is locked and this icon is displayed in the Locked State column.
• : The drawing is locked by someone else.
• If the drawing is not locked, no icon is displayed.

Tip: You can see which documents are currently locked by displaying columns on the Autodesk Docs page of the Start tab and in Windows Explorer. You can also see the locked status of documents in the Autodesk Docs web interface.

Files that require manual locking

Automatic locking and unlocking is not supported for survey databases. You need to manually lock and unlock these files when working with them to avoid editing conflicts. See the following section for information about manual locking.

Locking in previous versions of Most of the cloud collaboration work for the 2022 release revolves around performance, stability, and consistency improvements

If you are working in Civil 3D 2020.1 or a previous version of Civil 3D, or any version of AutoCAD or an AutoCAD-based product, locking is not automatic when you open a drawing that is stored in Autodesk Docs.

Before editing a document, you should manually lock it before editing it. If you don't lock it, someone else could overwrite your changes. You can lock a document on a connected drive, or you can lock it in Autodesk Docs.

When you save a new drawing to Autodesk Docs, you should manually lock it before continuing to work on it so someone else cannot overwrite your changes.

After editing and saving the document, you can check the document version shown in Autodesk Docs and review the changes in the Autodesk Docs Viewer. For more information, see To Use Autodesk Docs Viewing and Markup Tools for Civil 3D Drawings. After you have confirmed the changes are uploaded, you need to manually unlock the document so other team members can edit it.

Note: If you edit a document that you have not locked, and someone else edits it at the same time and uploads it to Autodesk Docs, "Conflict" will be displayed as the status of the document. For more information, see Autodesk Docs Page (Start Tab).

To manually lock or unlock a document in Autodesk Docs

1. Open Autodesk Docs and navigate to the document location.
2. Select the check box next to the document, and then click the lock icon or the unlock icon .

For more information, see Documents in the Autodesk Docs Help.