That setting which Sdeters speaks about isn't new. It exists in at least NX7.5 where we had issues with it...
There are two ways of viewing this issue. with the manual checkout, EVERYBODY MUST MANUALLY checkout ALL files that they would like to prevent changes from other users to, AND the files you intend to save yourself. If you would like this setting active ( Customer Defaults) EVERYBODY MUST use the same.
We had a case where a interested user changed this setting for himself and his colleagues, the colleagues where not fully up to what it meant and one of them worked half a day on an assembly , which somebody else had checked out and saved... He wasn't happy.
The opposite is the automatic checkout (the default) as soon as something becomes "modified" in the NX session.
That will then prevent any colleagues to save that file, and they will get messages about that somebody has it checked out.
I do not agree that it's a misnomer. I think that's exactly what it is.
What we are missing in NX/ Teamcenter is an option to "Open read only state" and if /when that would exist an option to change that state file by file.
Regards,
Tomas