Hi Sara,

In CATIA V5, Publication is a method that will save you alot of time if you do "Relational Design" and "morphing" of parts that contain External References to other parts.

By Publishing parent geometry, you are telling other users which geometry they should use to drive their designs. If the options are set correctly, users can be forced to only use published geometry for External References.

Published geometry can also be used for Assembly Constraints, to make sure parts are assembled per the design intent.

The big benefit is when you change the the parent geometry. If published, the changes will pass down to the children parts when they are updated. If not published, the child parts will have update errors requiring users to manually replace all the broken links (external references and constraints) with the new parent geometry.

This is a methodology that your company should set as a standard procedure that all users follow.