Vault Organization

Owned by Matthew McCauley
Last updated: Sep 10, 2023
6 min read

NER’s sponsorship contract with Altium includes all of Altium 365 Professional, including their integrated cloud-based data management system. This page will elaborate on how users can find and access data. Additionally, this discusses the revision state process.

CONTENTS

Normal Access

These are the panels typically used when working on schematics and layout, after components have already been added to the library. These panels are simplified for quick and simple access.

Projects Panel

The projects panel is typically found on the left side of the screen. As with all panels in Altium, this can be moved anywhere you prefer.

Opening and closing documents, renaming files, uploading and downloading from the cloud server, and other operations are all completed from this panel.

The right most column of icons (green checks and yellow clocks) indicate the server status of files. This informs you if there is a new version ready for download, a local version for upload, or any other conflict or issues. Hovering over these icons gives a full explanation of status.

The left column of icons (the small files and people) indicate the local status of files. This includes if the file is opened or closed, unsaved changes, and if there are other people on the server with the file open/edited.

Complete documentation can be found here: https://www.altium.com/documentation/altium-designer/managing-project-documents#!projects_panel

Components Panel

The components panel is typically found on the right side of the screen, particularly when working on schematics.

The components panel has an intuitive interface for finding components via component type. Types are selected via the dropdown, and the filter can then be used to select necessary parameters.

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Note that the component types were based off of Digikey’s categorization. These have shifted a bit over the years, but are overall still quite similar.

Complete documentation can be found here: https://www.altium.com/documentation/altium-designer/schematic-searching-placing-components#!components-panel

The Explorer

The explorer panel is the complete view of all assets in the cloud. This view allows for more direct control and organization, but can be more confusing.

The Explorer should really only be needed when creating new components. During normal schematic design and layout the normal access panels should be sufficient.

Library Health

See image above.

This “folder” searches the component library for all issues with components. The color scheme identifies severity of the issue.

The first column, “Supply Chain”, reports how easily components can be acquired. The second, “Component Details”, reports on errors made when creating and organizing components. The third, “Duplicates”, reports on duplicate components. The fourth, “Models”, reports on components that use bad footprints or symbols (typically outdated or deleted).

Generally, you can figure out what each category does by just reading the description.

Supply Chain

We primarily just care about “No Defined Part Choices” as this is required to allow Altium ActiveBOMs to work. The other two errors have to do with acquisition of parts, which is more applicable when making boards in massive volumes, which we do not do.

Component Details

These are all important categories.

Duplicates

These are all important categories.

Models

These are all important categories.

Further Reading

Altium 365 - Getting Started Guide | Library Health Dashboard

Altium 365 User Manual | Library Health Dashboard

Part Requests

This is used by larger organizations to allow engineers to request parts and have full-time librarians create the components for them. We don’t do this, so this should look like an empty folder.

Auto-Generated Components

We also don’t use this either.

Components

This folder contains all complete components within our vault. The objects accessed here are identical to those of the “Components” panel, just with a different organization system (folder-based instead of tag-based).

Components in Altium consist of an association of a symbol, a footprint, a MPN, SPNs, parameters, and more. Symbols and footprints are stored in our “Managed Content” and other details (such as part numbers and parameters) are filled in manually upon component creation. These all then maintain references, so updates to the source footprint or symbol files will propagate to the component on next revision.

More info on the component creation process can be found in the Component Creation page.

Managed Content

Managed content is the core of our online Altium Vault. Most importantly, it includes 3D Models, Footprints, and Symbols which makes up our components. Additionally, it contains Templates (project, component, etc) and Design Reuse Blocks.

More info on how this relates to component creation can be found in the component creation page

3D Models

This folder is used for all 3D CAD used in footprints.

Design Reuse Blocks

This folder stores reuse blocks. Reuse blocks allow us to store sub-circuits for reuse, both in schematic and in layout.

Footprints

This folder is used for all the actual footprints.

Symbols

This folder is used for all the actual schematic symbols.

Templates

This folder contains all Altium templates. This includes templates for components, projects, schematics, and more.

Managed Flows Attachments

We don’t use these.

Mechatronic 3D Models

This folder compiles all 3D models that are stored in the vault. We currently have no use for this view/folder.

Projects

As the name implies, projects are stored in this folder.

Generally projects are sorted by vehicle (NER17, NER22, etc). We additionally have a folder for “External” projects. This contains capstone projects, Baja projects, and other personal projects.

Revision States

Everything in Altium has a revision state. This is particularly easy to see in the explorer, under the lifecycle tab.

At NER the lifecycle path that most people will interact with is the component lifecycle. Below is a block diagram of the component lifecycle.

Note that all transitions are public, with the exception of moving to “Reviewed”.

Component States

  • Planned - Autogenerated when a component is created. This state is rarely seen as it will transition immediately to Draft

  • Draft - Normal state for when a component is being worked on. This is the state it will sit in as people are editing the symbol, layout, and parameters. Components are also sent to this state if they have to be revised after being in the later stage states.

  • Pending Review - This state is a waiting state for when editing is complete and a component needs review. Only heads can move a component to the Reviewed state, so Pending Review is an in-between that any member can use to mark a component as done for editing and ready for a review.

  • Reviewed - Component has been reviewed by an EE head and confirmed to be ready as iterated in the Component Review Checklist. This is a component that ready to be used in designs without needing an additional review.

  • Production - Component has been successfully used in a fabricated and assembled project. Errors can always happen, so production status is a 100% confirmation that a component has no issues.

  • Obsolete - Effectively deletion, but done in a way that old designs won’t get fucked up.

Changing States

  1. Find the component (or other object) in the Explorer

  2. Right Click & Navigate to Operations > Change State

  3. Select action, and hit process!

Bonus Notes

Children and parents can be selected within the state change window by right clicking.

This is super useful for updating the state of the nested footprint and symbol when approving a component!