I'm asking this both on Acad forum and here - it crosses the boundaries.
In Acad, I have a 2D floor plan dwg Xref'd into 2 other files; firstly Xrefd into a 2D Master dwg; secondly attached as a Reference into a 3D dgn file. To start with, in the Acad Master dwg, I could Edit In Place, and the change would propagate through both to the floor plan dwg and from there to the where it is attached in the dgn file. But now something's changed and when I try to open Edit In Place in the Acad Master dwg, although XEDIT = 1, I get: "Xref cannot be checked out for editing [File name} A file lock already exists on the drawing"
In the dgn when I try to Activate it says;
"File already in use by another user". I guess it's because the floor plan dwg is Ref'd into 2 drawings, so isn't allowed to be Activate/In Place Edited in either of them? The problem continues even when I close Microstation, and even when I Detach the Ref'd dwg from the dgn file.
It's just funny that it all worked fine to start with.