rawsense Phases & Versions
Phases & Versions

Work freely.
Freeze what everyone agreed on.

Your drawings never change. What changes is your reading of them, and that deserves a record. A phase is where the team works. A version is the moment you all agreed, kept exactly as it was.

A project is only ever in one of two states

Nothing to configure and no workflow to design. One glance at the top of the sidebar tells you whether work can happen.

Open

An open phase

The working state. Draw, label, connect, parse, review — everything is live. Every project starts here, and comes back here after each version. There is only ever one, which is why it is the phase and never phase 3.

Frozen

Held by a version

Everything stays readable and nothing can be changed. Signed-off work cannot be edited later, not even by accident.

The cycle

A phase becomes a version, the version starts the next phase, and on it goes. Each version is a complete snapshot of the project at the moment it was frozen — not a diff, not a partial save.

The phase annotate · accept Version 1 The phase again — copied, or empty Version 2 The phase open now ··· Export Export any version, any time
Each phase ends in a version, and each version begins the next phase. Only versions are numbered — a project has just one phase at a time, so the phase needs no number, only a state. Export is a branch rather than a step: it takes nothing away, and the same version can be exported again months later.

What a version keeps

Enough to reproduce the moment. Not a note about it — the thing itself.

1

Every layer, frozen

All the boxes, relationships and parsed text exactly as they stood. Locked, so the snapshot stays true.

2

The labels of that day

A copy of the label set as it was. Rename or reorganise your labels later and the old version still reads the way it was reviewed.

3

Your drawings, untouched

Files are never duplicated and never deleted by versioning. A version costs you the annotations, never the drawings.

The same project, three months on

This is the whole idea. Work moves forward and labels get renamed, corrected and reorganised — and every version still reads the way it read on the day it was frozen.

first pass review comments applied still being worked on Version 1 issued for review 59 labels · 900 layers March Version 2 approved 63 labels · 900 layers April The phase open, editable June start
Four labels were added between March and April. Open Version 1 today and it still shows 59 — the reading that was actually issued, not today's label set applied backwards over old work.

Starting the next phase

While a version holds the project, you choose how the next round of work begins.

Carry on

From a copy

Bring the frozen work forward and continue from where you stopped. The version stays untouched behind you, so you can always compare.

Start clean

Empty

A blank layer on every drawing. For a second pass done independently, or a different reading of the same set.

Deleting a version can't cost you your work

This is the part people worry about, so it is not left to careful reading. Before anything happens, the system checks whether the work exists anywhere else — and tells you which of these two it is about to do.

NOTHING NEWER EXISTS Your work comes back version + layers open phase The layers unlock and return to the phase. Only the version label disappears, and you pick up editing exactly where you stopped. NEWER WORK EXISTS The old snapshot is removed superseded version deleted A later version or an open phase already holds this work, so the superseded copy goes. Your drawings are untouched either way.
The last remaining version is the one thing you cannot throw away by accident. Deleting it hands the work back to you instead.

Frozen doesn't mean hidden

A locked layer opens like any other. Read every box, every relationship and all the parsed text, follow the links, filter and inspect. The controls that would change something are simply not there.

Yours to read

Everything stays legible

Open the drawing, browse the components, expand the relationships, scroll the parsed text. Review a finished phase in full, any time.

Held back

Nothing can slip

No drawing, no editing, no deleting, no re-running the parser. What was agreed stays exactly as agreed.

In one sentence

Work in an open phase for as long as you like, freeze it when the team agrees, and the frozen copy stays readable and unchangeable while the next phase moves on.