Inventor Read Only Mode - Open Multiple Drawings in One Session?

[coreyparks]

I assume there is no way to do what I want to do but I figured I'd ask anyway.  Can you open more than one file at a time with Inventor read only mode?  I can't find a setting so pretty sure i'm SOL but I had to ask.  I need to open and print several dozen assembly drawings saved on a networked VPN location and using regular Inventor is extremely slow since it needs all of the corresponding files.  I thought I would try read only and see if that worked.  It opens them quite fast but then the next one opens a completely new session for some stupid reason.  Not the end of the world but it would be faster if it didn't have to do this plus it would be easier to track what I have and have not printed if I could keep all of the drawings I'm working with in one single application.  As just another side note it would also be nice if read only mode supported custom programming so I could use my one click PDF printer instead of having to  set it up each time. 

[andrewiv · Accepted solution]

You can open more than one file in Read-Only mode if you are opening from the Read-Only session.  It also works from Vault.  If I RMB on a file and choose open it opens a read only session, the next file I do the same thing to opens that fine in the same session.

[coreyparks]

Well, that's just stupid, lol. Someone sent me the location as a UNC path so I couldn't easily browse to the location inside of Inventor and I just tried to open from Windows explorer. I copied the UNC path into the Inventor open window and selected the files I needed and Boom. I just never expected the multiple documents support would vary based on how you opened a document. Thanks for that!

[coreyparks]

And now I remember why I quit using read only mode.  It takes over the file associations and now I can no longer open a drawing from Vault in Inventor it defaults to Read Only Mode.  Well time to close everything and open and close Inventor to it takes back the file associations and remember to never open Read Only mode again, lol.