Global Sharing

One of the most powerful aspects of having Altium Concord pro hosted on the Altium 365 infrastructure platform is the latter's support for collaboration on a global scale. At the heart of this is the platform's support for Global Sharing. With Altium 365, you can effortlessly share your current design progress with management, or purchasing, or a potential manufacturer, in a way that is also easy for them - simplified, interactive collaboration, from any device.

Data can be shared with anyone, anywhere in the world. What you share, and with whom, is down to you, and could include:

• Sharing design data by bringing other users into your Workspace team. Share projects, folders and items as required. With projects for example, you might share read-only access to garner comment and feedback. Or perhaps grant read/write access to allow full, global collaboration by a geographically dispersed team (with editing performed through Altium Designer).
• Sharing of release data with your manufacturer through a defined Manufacturing Package, which they can then peruse through the Altium 365 platform's dedicated Manufacturing Package Viewer - without them having access to your Workspace and therefore keeping your design data out of sight. They can then download the Build Package with which to get your board fabricated and assembled.

Global Sharing of Design Data

Related pages: Inviting Other Users to Your Team, Inviting Others to Your Workspace from within Altium Designer

The Altium 365 Platform's support for Global Sharing enables you to add new users for access to your Workspace - inviting them to the Team - in a number of ways. You are able to invite:

• Other AltiumLive users from within your own organization.
• AltiumLive users from different organizations.
• Non-AltiumLive users (who will need to then register for AltiumLive accounts).

Aside from direct addition of new users by an Administrator - from the Team and Admin-Users pages of the Workspace's browser interface - users can be invited to participate in the Workspace at the point of sharing data - projects, folders, items and item revisions, from within Altium Designer, or from the Workspace's browser interface (as applicable). Each invited user who is not currently a member of your Workspace Team will receive an invitation email. One of two styles of email invite can be received:

• Generic Workspace Invite - received when the user has been added directly to the Workspace (through its browser interface), or when a folder, Item or Item Revision within that Workspace, has been shared with them.
• Specific Project Collaboration Invite - received when a managed project within the Workspace has been shared with the user.

As part of support for ECAD-MCAD CoDesign in Altium Designer - in conjunction with having Altium Concord Pro hosted on Altium 365 - you can share a project with a Mechanical Engineer at the time of pushing the PCB to your Workspace and, in doing so, invite that person into your Workspace Team. You are able to share with a person that is already a member of your Workspace Team, another AltiumLive user in or outside of your organization, or a user that does not have AltiumLive (they will first need to sign up/register for an AltiumLive account before they are added to the Workspace Team).

The user will be:

1. Added to the Workspace Team (if not already).
2. The project will be shared with them (Read-only access).
3. They will be added to the Mechanical Engineers role.
4. They will receive an invitation email with which to gain access to the project within the Workspace.

Global Sharing of Manufacturing Package Data

Related page: Manufacturing Package Viewer

A key aspect of design projects managed within a 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 Home page of the browser-based Altium 365 Platform Interface (those shared with you, along with any packages you have shared with others).

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.