Check out puts a lock on the file so that only you can edit it. Others can view the file but they cannot make changes while you have it checked out. After you check the file in, someone else can check it out and make their changes.
Also you can tell the check-out process to export the dataset to local drive so that you can work on it outside of teamcenter.
The Check-in process will import it again into Teamcenter. Prerequisites are that you don't change the name and location where the file is stored on your local harddrive.
Ronald van den Broek
Senior Application Engineer
Winterthur Gas & Diesel Ltd
NX9 / TC10.1.2
Building new PLM environment from Scratch using NX11 / TC11