¿What is the benefit in use Workspace Links menu in RSA?
Accepted answer
Normally, workspace links are initialized automatically if the same model exists in your workspace and on the server. You can use the workspace link menu to override the defaults, i.e. to remove or add a workspace link. To answer your question of the benefit of the workspace links menu item: Typically, you would use this menu item to add a workspace link if you imported a model into your local workspace after connecting to a project on a Design Management server, and you want to establish the correspondence between the model you imported into your local workspace with the model on the Design Management server.
Comments
A little clarification on this would be nice in the documentation. In the help page on Workspace Links, it says:
"A workspace-link allows you to work with a model in the local workspace like a model stored on the server. With a locally-stored model that is workspace-linked, you can select that model and create comments, CLM Links, or subscribe to changes in that model element in the Project Explorer view."
This makes it sound like changes in the model in Design Explorer (DE)--additions or deletions--should show up in Project Explorer (PE) and vice-versa. In some experimentation, however, this isn't true. I modified one of my test projects in both PE and DE by adding new UPIA Capabilities and linking them to higher-level Capbilities that exist in both the DE and PE views. No changes seemed to propagate, even though I had "subscribed" in PE.
You are right; the "work with" refers to links, comments, and subscribing, and not to modifications to the resource itself.
To be clear, changes that you make in the Project Explorer do not automatically propagate to the Design Explorer, and changes in the Design Explorer do not propagate to the Project Explorer.
To propagate the changes from the Project Explorer to the Design Explorer, one must perform an import.
Please keep in mind that the Project Explorer shows the resources in your local workspace (typically your own hard drive), while the Design Explorer shows the remote copy of the resources on the Design Management server.