New in Altium Concord Pro

Now reading version 1.1. For the latest, read: New in Altium Concord Pro for version 5.0

This documentation page references Altium Concord Pro, which has been discontinued. All your PCB design, data management and collaboration needs can now be delivered by Altium Designer and a connected Altium 365 Workspace. Check out the FAQs page for more information.

Altium Concord Pro 1.1

Released: 21 August 2020 - Version: 1.1.10 (build 99)
Released: 10 April 2020 - Version: 1.1.9 (build 89)
Released: 5 February 2020 - Version: 1.1.8 (build 80)
Released: 14 January 2020 - Version: 1.1.7 (build 76)
Released: 24 October 2019 - Version: 1.1.6 (build 66)
Released: 1 August 2019 - Version: 1.1.4 (build 56)

Release Notes for Altium Concord Pro 1.1

This release sees further beneficial enhancements to Altium Concord Pro and its related technologies. In addition, numerous fixes have been made to resolve issues raised by customers through the AltiumLive Community.

While the Altium Concord Pro installer includes automated backup of your existing installation, it is always a good idea to make a pre-update backup of your data yourself – taking a redundancy copy off to one side as it were. This provides additional safety, should any unforeseen technical difficulties arise (see Backing up and Restoring Your Installation). It is advised to test out a new release of Altium Concord Pro on a different machine, before updating your production instance. Use of Virtual Machines can be invaluable in this respect.

In addition, please ensure that you refresh your Concord Pro licensing. From the Admin - Licenses page of Concord Pro's browser interface, delete the existing licenses (Altium Concord Pro and Altium Concord Pro CAL) and then add fresh instances back in. This will ensure you have the latest licensing, incorporating any licensing-related feature changes.

While connection to Altium Concord Pro 1.1 is possible from Altium Designer 19.0, users are encouraged to update to the latest version of Altium Designer – especially where Server enhancements relate to changes to the user interface within Altium Design.

GUI Change

This release sees Concord Pro's browser interface given a 'GUI Makeover' - switching to a dark interface that is more in-keeping with the familiar look and feel of Altium Designer. Since Altium Designer and Altium Concord Pro are, in essence, symbiotic work partners, having them similarly themed gives a stronger feeling of consistency.

While much of the content of the interface remains the same, you will notice some enhancements to controls here and there, to present an intuitive, sleek interface with which to interact with, and manage your Concord Pro installation.

For more information about what Concord Pro's browser interface has to offer, and a great place to get a feeling for what has changed with the GUI, see the page Exploring the Browser-based Interface.


New Interface for Managed Projects

This release sees the arrival of a completely new and sleek interface for working with your managed projects. The interface includes all projects that are shared with you, offers a range of controls to access project management features, and can be browsed in either a project preview (graphical tiles) mode, or a detailed list mode.

You can also access a manufacturing orientated CAD-centric view of the project which offers Design, Manufacturing and BOM view options:

  • Design - display and navigate source project design documents, view design object properties and place review comments. This view uses the Web Review interface. This view is for the latest version of the source project data, rather than a specified release from that project, and so could be considered to be a work-in-progress (WIP) view.
  • Manufacturing - view the releases for the project. Access is provided for opening a release, which will be presented on a separate tab through a Manufacturing Portal. From this portal you can view and navigate the released Assembly and Fabrication data, inspect the BOM, and ultimately download the data into a manufacturing Build Package.
  • BOM - view the source project's Bill Of Materials information.

Full Sample Data

This release includes the ability to install full sample data as part of the installation. Now when you perform a fresh install of Altium Concord Pro and leave the Install sample data option enabled - on the Select Altium Concord Pro Data Directory page of the Altium Concord Pro Setup wizard - you'll get full sample data, including:

  • A multi-board design project (Kame-1.PrjMbd) featuring five child PCB design projects:
    • Kame_EXP_BRK.PrjPcb
    • Kame_FMU.PrjPcb
    • Kame_IMU.PrjPcb
    • Kame_MB.PrjPcb
    • Kame_MDB.PrjPcb
  • A range of components (and their referenced symbols and footprints) used within the example design projects.
  • Managed Schematic Sheets
  • BOM Templates
  • Component Templates
  • Draftsman Document and Sheet Templates
  • Layer Stacks
  • Output Job Templates
  • Project Templates
  • Schematic Templates

You'll also get sample defined roles and lifecycle definitions. All of this can be very handy if you are new to the server technology, because it gives you something to explore, right out-of-the-box.

If the option to Install sample data is disabled, you'll just get the data structure of server folders in which to start creating your various data Items, along with some defined component templates.

Browser-based Health Monitoring

This release sees the Health page of the interface (Admin - Health) overhauled. It now provides a web-based Health Monitor. The page delivers a visual summary of the state of the host machine, and the Concord Pro storage system.

As well as the quick visual summary of the server's health, the page also provides the following functionality:

  • Ability to generate a status report for sending to Altium's Support (and ultimately Altium's Developers).
  • Ability to download all log files - containing Error and Warning entries from all of the server’s available Log files.
  • Ability to archive, then delete all existing log files.
  • Ability to manually refresh the status of your server - performing a health check on demand as it were.
Note that after initial install of Altium Concord Pro, initial check of server health takes about 5 minutes after accessing the Health page. You can perform a manual refresh to perform the check sooner. Subsequent automatic checking is carried out every 4 hours.
The Altium Concord Pro installation continues to provide a Health Monitor that can be launched as a standalone tool - on the computer hosting Concord Pro - which is better suited to IT departments usage.

Additional Features & Enhancements

  • The default data directory installation paths for a fresh install of Altium Concord Pro are now:
    • Database Folder\ProgramData\Altium\ConcordProData
    • Revision Files Folder\ProgramData\Altium\ConcordProData\Revisions
  • In the Admin area of the interface, the PLM Integration page of the interface has been renamed Component Sync - to better reflect the capabilities of this integration with regard to synchronization of components only between Altium Concord Pro and an enterprise system instance.
  • The System user, while still used for background tasks, has been hidden from the Users page of the interface. For a fresh install, only the admin user is defined.
  • More Locations and Currencies are now supported, when configuring the Altium Parts Provider part source, on the Part Providers area of the interface (Admin - Part Providers).

 

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