In some organizations, CAD Managers feel more comfortable controlling who has write-access to drawings based on the discipline. (So Structural designers can't change piping configurations and vice-versa.) Many CAD Managers (or Project Administrators) do this by setting access rights at the folder level. In the above example, the hierarchy is area-based and disciplines are sub-folders of the area. In this case, the administrator will need to set rights for every discipline in every area. Note that this would be done at the project setup and the rights would only need to be changed when project personnel change.
An alternative approach could be to create a folder structure with the disciplines at the top and areas as sub-folders for each discipline. In this approach the rights need only be set at the discipline folder level.
Plant 3D folders do not need to exactly match the Windows folder structure, so it is possible to set up the project folder to be hierarchical based on areas (as shown above) but have the Windows folder structure be set up based on disciplines. See Appendix 1 for more information on how to set this up.