Design Project Release in Altium Designer

Parent page: Preparing Your Design for Manufacture

Once a design is considered ready for flight into the wider world, it needs to be released – a process that can often be underestimated.

Without a regimented and fundamentally-sound release process, tracking an ever-maturing product over time can be fraught with any number of pitfalls. Just imagine needing to go back and release a previous revision of your product, only to find that all required source design files were never included, as a snapshot, with that particular release! That's OK, just get the generated output files from the relevant folder(s) for that release – trusty Gerbers and any additional fabrication and assembly information, that's all that's really needed anyway. But imagine those 'trusty' outputs have been overwritten, or become corrupt somehow. If only the release process were more robust.

Altium Designer answers this call by providing powerful, high-integrity board design release management. The board design release process is automated, enabling you to release your board design projects without the risks associated with manual release procedures. When a particular project is released, a snapshot of the design source is taken and archived along with any generated output – which represents a tangible product that is made from that design project and sold by the company. Release data is stored in revisions of the relevant project-related Item in the target Workspace:

• PCB Project Design Item – the snapshot of the design, including all source documents. Released into a separate Item in the Workspace, allowing you to keep your valuable IP aside from the generated fabrication and assembly data needed by external parties to build the product.
• PCB Fabrication Data Item – the data set required by the fabrication house for manufacture of the bare board.
• PCB Assembly Data Item – the data set required by the assembly house in order to populate the bare board with specified components, in accordance with a Bill of Materials. A unique Item is used for the base (fully populated) design, and each defined variant for the design (assembled variants).

Generated data from a board design is securely stored in the Workspace within revisions of project-related Items. This high-integrity data is then used by the supply chain to build the required revision of the product.

The overall result is the highest-integrity board design release management possible. Not only is your actual design project tightly monitored, backed-up, and under version control, but also too, the releases of its data in a similar manner within the target Workspace – robust, safe, secure.

Key Benefits

• Integration with version control. If your project is under version control, then the system requires all files to be checked in and up to date before releasing. This ensures that no "private copy" of an essential design document is ever allowed to sit on an engineer's hard drive – with the potential of becoming lost. This simple rule can save hours down the track in costly searching for the right set of design documents that were used to generate a released product.
• 'One-shot releasing'. The system only allows you to release once to any given revision of a targeted Item. In fact, a successful release results in committing (storing) the release data in the referenced Item Revision, then closes that revision. No further data can be generated and released into that same revision.
• Automated and repeatable design release process. One-touch releasing – no manual stages or risks. From taking the snapshot of the design files, through validation, and output generation, there is no interaction. If a part of the process fails, the release fails. Simple as that. And you get to review all generated data before final committal of the release data into the Item Revision in the target Workspace.

• Ability to validate the design as an integral part of the design release process. The release process works from a 'locked down' snapshot of the design source (including dependencies) and pre-release validation is almost sure to have been performed prior to initiating release. But for additional peace of mind and to ensure the integrity of the design data, you can optionally add validation checks into the release process 'flow', through appropriately-configured Output Job Configurations. Standard ERC checking for the source schematics and DRC checking of the PCB, but also the ability to check that the source project and PCB are in-sync, and comparison of footprints on the board against their source library to ensure they are up-to-date, and matched. The release will fail if any validation checks are not passed successfully.

  When using Workspace components in your design, you can add and configure an additional validation check – Component State Checking. This checks for components that are in restricted states. As part of configuration, you determine the action to be taken for each currently defined state, of each currently defined lifecycle definition in the target Workspace; no action, a warning, or generate an error. The latter will prevent release of the design. In addition, running the check will generate a handy HTML-based report, allowing you to see at-a-glance which design components are not in valid states.
  You can also include an Environment Configuration Compliance Check. This provides a means to conclusively test and enforce the use of company-authorized data elements in a design. Simply put, if you are not using data items permitted through the environment configuration available for use by your assigned role, the release will fail. This prevents a 'loose cannon' approach to design and ensures adherence to, and compliance with, the working design environments determined centrally at the enterprise level.
• All generated data files from the design release process can be optionally prefixed with the Item ID and the Item Revision ID, ensuring there can be no ambiguity as to which revision of which Item the data is to be used to build.
• Publishing. Offering the ability to publish release data directly from a Workspace to a shared storage space, such as Amazon S3, FTP servers, Box.com, or a simple network-based folder. This facilitates easy sharing of Workspace data in a secured way, without providing outside parties access to that Workspace.

The Board Design Release Process

Related page: Working with the Project Releaser

The release process itself is performed using Altium Designer's Project Releaser, the user interface to which is provided courtesy of a dedicated view – the Release view.

The Project Releaser caters for all types of PCB project – local/non-version-controlled, under external VCS control, or under the native version control of a connected Workspace – by offering two modes of operation:

With the Project Releaser, you'll be able to generate your manufacturing data with simplified ease, and with the highest integrity. And you'll also be able to survey the fruits of that generation before you commit to finalizing the release (viewing Gerbers/ODB++ data in the CAM Editor for example), ensuring that the data you have generated is exactly the data required to get your board manufactured on time, first time.

Publication of Released Data

Related page: Working with Publishing Destinations

For released data generated from a board design project (PCB Fabrication Data, PCB Assembly Data, and PCB Project Design Items only), you have the ability to directly publish that data from your Workspace, or Output Job, to a storage space, such as Box.com, Amazon S3, an FTP server, or a simple folder location on a shared network. In terms of distribution and collaboration, this provides an unparalleled advantage in a world where the collective members of the overall 'product team' – the design team, the manufacturing team and all others involved in the process of getting a product from thought to reality – are often dispersed around the globe.

Publishing is a matter of defining a Publishing Destination and then uploading the released data for the required Item Revision to that destination. From the manufacturing plant in China, to the design teams in Kiev, Stanstead Abbotts, and San Diego, and to the Project Director in-flight somewhere across the Pacific, everyone that needs to know about the new release can be invited with a link to the published folder – shared (and controlled) access to view, discuss, and utilize the data with which to build the Item.

Publish your released data to a storage space and share information between team members across the globe.

Why not take advantage of superior sharing of release data – through defined Manufacturing Packages – facilitated by the Altium 365 platform's Manufacturing Package Viewer (see the next section).

Global Sharing of Manufacturing Package Data

A key aspect of design projects stored in an Altium 365 Workspace is the ability to create and share a release Build Package with others. When shared directly with your manufacturer, it can then be thought of as a Manufacturing Package, since it is the package that the manufacturer can browse, download and use to fabricate and assemble the board.

Supporting the ability to share such a package with others, and with your manufacturer (who is typically outside of your organization), the Altium 365 Platform provides a dedicated Manufacturing Package Viewer – an element of the platform's Global Sharing support – which allows others to view a manufacturing package from any web browser – anywhere in the world – but outside of your Workspace, so that your designs themselves, and other valuable IP, are kept off limits.

Each shared user will receive an email invite with a link to view a manufacturing package through the Manufacturing Package Viewer. Shared manufacturing packages are presented on the Shared with Me page of the browser-based Altium 365 Platform Interface.

The Manufacturing Package Viewer itself allows key stakeholders – and primarily the manufacturing personnel – to see a summary overview of the design, with key board data, along with the ability to browse the structure of the source, fabrication and assembly data (and to download any individual file thereof as needed). Fabrication, Assembly and BOM data sub-pages of the viewer are also provided, with the Fabrication page presenting a Gerber Viewer and allowing for comments to be added by all users whom the package has been shared with.

Ultimately, the manufacturing personnel can download a Build Package of the release they have viewed – and from any page of the Viewer – with which to get that revision of the board physically realized.

A manufacturing package that has been shared with you can be accessed from the Shared with Me page. The person with whom you shared the manufacturing package will receive an email invite to access that package through Altium 365. Once they click the  button in the email they will be taken to the Altium 365 Sign In page (unless already signed in to the platform, or their AltiumLive account). Upon signing in, they will be taken to the Manufacturing Package Viewer, with the package loaded. If the person does not have an AltiumLive account, they will need to register for one first – a link is provided on the Altium 365 Sign In page.

Read about Manufacturing Package Viewer.

Web Viewer

Workspace's Web Viewer interface provides universal access to PCB project documents through a standard web browser. Much more than just a web-based viewer, Web Viewer's advanced browser technology allows users to navigate through the project structure, interact with design documents, extract information about elements in the design and highlight areas or objects for commenting notes.

When viewing documents the visual quality of schematics and PCBs are not compromised by its web format, which also provides full pan and zoom capabilities and the ability to search, cross-probe, select and inspect components and nets throughout the design.

As an independent browser based viewing platform, the Web Viewer interface offers interactive read-only access to design documents without the need to open the project in the design editing environment. Others that are working on the design, such as the engineer who 'owns' it, will not be affected by actions in the Web Viewer space – except for any related comment notifications.