Techniques

The following techniques can improve the process involving downloads:

Plan downloads in advance and execute them during non-peak hours.
To avoid downloading during prime time, have more than one subset checked out at all times. If work on one subset is finished or needs to be redefined, there is always a second subset to work on.
If downloads are allowed during the day, require that all users of that model be notified.
Create a subsetting expert for each project or model. This expert can help users define subsets appropriately, which reduces the number of incomplete subsets and subsets that are too large.
Users that have read-only access to a model can do a read-only download that does not check out anything. This is different from having update access and scoping objects for read protection. Users can also explicitly request a read-only download.