Applied Parameters: MergeActionIndex=n|Mode=RightClick (where n is in the range 0 to 20)
Summary
This command is used to perform the indicated merge operation, within the current cell containing one or more detected differences, when using Altium Designer's Collaborative PCB Design functionality.
After performing a comparison - from the Collaborate, Compare and Merge panel - between your own local document and another revision of that document under version control - typically the HEAD revision - any detected differences are presented in a Difference Map in the panel, and through use of a Differences Overlay in the main design workspace. To manage the display of differences the board is temporarily divided up into cells. The cell reference is displayed when you hover the cursor over the cell in the Difference Map in the panel, and is also displayed in a corner of the cell in the main design window. When multiple people are working on the same document, and changes by others have been made, the panel will show that a merge is required. By showing the merge resolution view, a variety of merge-based commands will be available, where applicable, to merge in differences detected in the reference document, into the current board. If a cell includes some changes that you want to keep and others that you want to bring in, then you can selectively merge the changes in the main PCB editor, using the merge action commands described here.
Access
These indexed commands are accessed from the PCB Editor by right-clicking within the current differences cell in the workspace, and selecting the required merge action from the Merge sub-menu.
The commands are only available provided a comparison has been initiated through the Collaborate, Compare and Merge panel, and differences have been detected that require merge actions. A richer set of available commands will be available when opting to show the merge resolution view.
Use
To resolve differences in the main workspace, right-click on an object that is flagged as a difference. The popup context menu will include a Merge submenu, offering merge actions tailored to the primitive that was clicked on.
There are 3 possible levels the commands in the Merge submenu can operate on:
- Primitive - only the actual track segment/via/component that you right-clicked on will be modified by this action.
- Route - for the connection you clicked on, all track segments that are different will be modified by this action.
- Cell - all track segments passing through the cell that are part of this difference, are modified by this action.
The commands available in the right-click Merge sub-menu support the following types of actions:
- Add - displayed when clicking on a primitive that exists in the reference document, but not in your document. Adds the primitives from the reference document into the current document, but does not remove primitives. When the Add Component action is performed, it will attempt to remove an existing component that would cause an UniqueID conflict.
- Remove - modifies primitives so the changes made to the current document are removed.
- Replace - adds and removes primitives so the end result matches the reference document used for comparison.
Tips
- Merging at a coarser level can also be performed directly from the Difference Map region of the Collaborate, Compare and Merge panel. Simply right-click on a modified cell to display the Add/Remove to match [ReferenceDocument] command. Selecting the command will modify the primitives in that cell to match the reference document. Note that the name of the reference document will be displayed in the square brackets. Multiple cells can be highlighted at the same time (Shift+click or drag+click to multi-select) allowing as many or as few changes from the reference to be brought across to the current board.