Designing Collaboratively in Altium NEXUS

The Art of Collaboration

More often than not, there are multiple people involved with the design and development of an electronic product. To do this effectively, the members of that design team need to be able to work collaboratively.

Sometimes the collaboration will be informal, for example sharing ideas and suggestions about how the design is to be implemented. Other times it will be formal, it might be about the circuit timing requirements, or needing to flag that there are design updates ready to be passed from one design domain to another, or alerting specific team members that there is a design review required.

The collaboration process can also cross company boundaries. For example, a company might outsource the creation of new components to a specialist librarian, or they might call on an engineer from their fabricator to participate in the sign-off design review for the PCB fabrication files. Situations like this might require the external designer to be able to review design or output data, even if they do not own a license of Altium's design software.

There is a broad range of interactions that fit under the banner of design collaboration, this page introduces the features in the software that support them.

Mechanisms for Collaboration

Collaboration is all about human interaction, it is not something that can be easily characterized and packaged into a single software feature or interface. Acknowledging that collaboration happens on many levels, in a variety of ways, there are a number of features to help designers work collaboratively, including:

• Process Workflows
• Design Comments
• The Collaboration panel
• The Tasklist panel

Interactive Process Workflows

Main article: An Overview of the Workflow Process

One of the best ways to show what needs to be done is to use a diagram. User-definable workflow diagrams can be created in the NEXUS server, and are referred to as Process Workflow Diagrams. Workflow diagrams and their inherent processes allow everyone in the team to know what needs to be done, and when it must be done by.

To achieve that, it must be possible to:

• Define a sequence of events that reflects the steps that must be undertaken in that process – the what.
• Define event points within the process where user interaction is required – the when.
• Include an interactive mechanism to track and display the input of collaborating team members.
• Deliver this in a way that suits the workflow of any company.

An Interaction Diagram, with a Form open for one of the Tasks.

Process Workflow Diagrams are Visio-like diagrams that can be used to define the various processes within the design cycle. As part of their definition, the creator can reflect the flow structure of the process, any points of acceptance and sign off, and can also create interactive forms where the participants can register their approval/disapproval, make notes, attach files, and so on. This information is stored with the project in the NEXUS Server.

User-defined workflow diagrams are created in the NEXUS Server, and then interacted with in Altium NEXUS design client. To learn more, refer to An Overview of the Workflow Process.

► See Performing Design Reviews for an example of a process workflow.

Design Comments

Acting like electronic Post-it^® notes, design comments can be attached to a schematic sheet or PCB design, without actually modifying the design document. Comments are placed via the editor's Place menu, and are stored in the NEXUS Server as document metadata. Because they are managed by the NEXUS Server they appear immediately on that document, for any other team member that currently has that document open.

Placed comments are displayed in the Comments panel, click on a comment in the panel to open the document it was placed on and zoom to the comment. A comment can be replied to with the entire thread being displayed in the panel, but only the last post being displayed on the schematic. If a comment is Resolved it is removed from the panel and design document, and you can Assign a comment to another user as a Task.

► Refer to Document Commenting in Managed Projects and the Comments panel page to learn more.

Collaboration Panel

The Collaboration panel provides a formal, traceable mechanism for pushing design changes made on a design document, through to other designers. Once the change has been made, the author of the change can Push that change. The affect of this is to save the updated file, commit it back into the NEXUS Server, and notify other designers. As with the Comments panel, other designers that have that project open will immediately receive a message in their Collaboration panel.

If the change crosses a design boundary, for example a schematic change that impacts the PCB, then other designers can Pull that change into the open PCB. The result is the modified schematic file is reloaded, and an Update PCB initiated, propagating the changes through to the PCB.

► Refer to the Collaboration panel page to learn more.

Tasklist panel

The Tasklist panel details all outstanding tasks assigned to the designer that is signed in.

These include:

• Part Requests
• Project Creations
• Design Reviews
• Assigned Comments

When the designer clicks on an active task in the panel a dialog will open, giving them access to the Form defined for that Task and an image of the interaction diagram, showing where this Task fits into the process. The Form is used by the designer to fulfill their contribution to that Task, it will detail which fields are mandatory and which are optional.

If the designer is the initiator of the Task, their Tasklist panel will also include details of any Activities they have initiated.

► Refer to the Tasklist panel page to learn more about this panel.

► Refer to the Monitoring and Actioning the Tasks section of the Workflow Process page to learn more about defining a Task.

Browser-based Web Review

The NEXUS Web Review feature provides direct access to a structured, read-only view of the project source documents in a standard web browser. The server-based feature is able to provide universal access to all collaborators involved in the design process, without the need to open the project in the design editing environment.

Using Web Review, anyone with a NEXUS Server account and suitable privileges can navigate through the project structure, interact with design documents, extract information about elements in the design and highlight areas or objects for commenting notes. It can be opened from:

• The Explorer panel Project view in the NEXUS design client.
• The Project view in the NEXUS Server.
• A web browser using a supplied URL.

► Refer to the Browser-based Web Review page for more information.