Owned and Reference Documents
A document can be either an owned document or a referenced document.
Owned Documents
An owned document is owned by the simulation process or simulation activity. When you create a document from the Content page of a simulation process or simulation activity, you are creating an owned document.
When you perform a PLM operation on a simulation process (or simulation activity), the same operation is applied to any document that is owned by the simulation process (or activity). For example, if you copy a simulation process, the new process contains copies of any owned documents and the copied documents are owned by the new process.
The lifecycle state of an owned document is inherited from the lifecycle state of the simulation process or activity that owns it. This Simulation Document has a "Simulation Document Owned' policy and displays the state "Exists", but the lifecycle state is inherited from the process or activity that owns it.
Referenced Documents
A referenced document refers to a document that already exists. You should create referenced documents for data that will not change often and that will be shared across simulation processes and simulation activities; for example, data that are used to define material properties.
A reference to a document can be thought of as a link to a document. Operations on a simulation process or simulation activity do not change the references to a document. For example, if you copy a simulation process, the new process continues to refer to any referenced documents.
If you have a document stored in a simulation process, you can use the document in an unrelated simulation activity by referring to the document in the simulation process. This allows multiple, unrelated activities to share a document inside a simulation process. You can create a download rule in a simulation activity that moves a referenced document from a simulation process to the working directory. (Similarly, you can create a download rule in a simulation activity that moves a referenced simulation folder from a simulation process to the working directory; however, the simulation process must be the parent of the simulation activity that is executing the rule.)