The only suggestion I have is that you need to organize the folders in your search paths.
Name you files with the part number and revision level: 145265.B.prt
Move released files and drawings to a Released folder.
Store hardware and other common items in their own sub-folders.
Create working directories for your users. Have them copy the files they need to their workspace.
Structure the search paths very carefully so the software loads the right files.

BTW - You are using software that is at least 11 years old! the last release of WF5 was in September 2010.
How much productivity are you losing by not being on later versions?
How much productivity are you losing by not investing in a PLM system to manager your files?

"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli

Search paths and folders and discipline is about it. My experience is that discipline is where these schemes fail and do so badly.

I expect the reason for not using a PLM is that the likely one will be Windchill which PTC has clearly designed to be operated by a staff of SQL experts - not a problem when they sell it to multinationals, but too bad for the 5 person shop that the original Intralink was perfect for.

Thank you for your reply and suggestions.

Will try and get back to you

Thanks & Regards,
Sam

Windchill can be run without a lot of SQL experience as long as you can use it OOTB. I have been managing and installing Windchill here for 11 years and have no training in Oracle or SQL. There are a few SQL commands that are needed to rehost Windchill, but other than that it is relatively painless.
The hardest part of Windchill is the initial setup of your contexts, states, roles and ACLS. It is mostly all covered in a Windchill System Administration class. ACLs are the weak point in the training and I did hire a consultant to help finalize what I had setup. Took us less than 20 hours to get it all together and running.

"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli

Quote (looslib)

BTW - You are using software that is at least 11 years old! the last release of WF5 was in September 2010.
How much productivity are you losing by not being on later versions?

I have quite a few products that are still in WF4 even though we also have CREO 6 available. To me, the productivity of WF4 is head and shoulders better than any of versions that use the ribbon interface. Also, PTC destroyed the drawing functionality of the show/erase interface with Creo. Drawing/detailing is still the most time consuming part of the design process and PTC continues to make it harder and harder to do.

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The Help for this program was created in Windows Help format, which depends on a feature that isn't included in this version of Windows.

PTC drawing creation has always been second-rate.
One company I worked at used to take 2-D views from Pro/E and paste them into AutoCAD to do their drawings.
When Pro/Engineer was first released, V1 did not even have a drafting module. Drafting did not appear until V3.

"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli

There are other PLM/PDM systems that integrate with PTC products, Windchill being one of the newer databases. My previous employer had TeamCenter fully integrated into Creo and it was rare for engineers to actually use the rich client vs simply using the dropdown menu in Creo.

does your company have any type of Google Drive or Sharepoint?

I have used those in the past at small companies and startups with decent success, but as others have said all it takes is one moron to bring down all the house of cards

THIS SIGNATURE IS INTENTIONALLY BLANK

My idea is you can try for SVN (Sub Version) for the Version control and management. Though These tool is used for Software development purpose, but I think It will also work for file management purpose. At lease you can track the changes in the CAD files. I'm not sure how efficient it will be for your purpose.

SVN won't be able to track anything unless there is an integration for the CAD product to read the relationships in the CAD files. Software is relatively easy as those relationships are clearly identified and software is highly linearly structured so tracking changes is also relatively easy.

Funny enough PTC does have an integration for Creo on SVN, for their software development products, not their CAD products and this is through the Windchill services. If one has Windchill then one can get the Windchill package to handle Creo and this management is complete.