I would ask, what benefit is he looking to gain by renaming this file?
Is this merely a tracking mechanism and or for documentation of "history"
Yes purely for use on drawings this date (+/-) forward.
That is easily stated... but in reality
If that is the case you can have a "revision" page, or maintain it in a docment management system, etc...
Huh what is the new new fangled tool you are talking about? Dam city folk always getting us to try to use new things like tele-phones. If I wanted to talk to some one, I will just drive over and talked to the person.
A document management system allows you to keep a history of file changes without changing the name of the file. It also allows you to set the permissions as to who can read/write to these files, etc... We maintain 200,000+ drawing files across a territory from Florida to North Carolina. Without a DMS we would never be able to track and maintain the history of changes. When things blowup this becomes very important to be able to know what has occurred.
In addition, we maintain and distribute support files across the network to any/all these locations.
Looking at it from a purely financial standpoint... Can it be justified?
the number of drawings to be changed + the time it takes to make that change = $$$
Can whatever benefits (he is thinking of) be achieved via another avenue?
We are not looking to go back and change any drawings. Not yet any anyway.
Again, is this realistic? If you are updating this file for improvement purposes, would you not want those improvements to show up on all your drawings? Or are you simply going to maintain multiple CTB files (the new ones going forward and the legacy ones as well)?
Changing a file name just to "document the file" can be handled in other ways that would have less impact to the bottom line....
JMO...