Working with Requirements

The Requirements and Systems Portal is an advanced engineering management application used to ensure specification and performance compliance during system design development. When enabled for your Altium 365 Workspace, the Requirements and Systems Portal integrates with your PCB design projects through the exchange of design data and formalized Requirements instances. The system requirements, as created in the Requirements and Systems Portal, can be placed as active instances on your design documents, referenced as tasks, and ultimately marked as Verified to confirm requirement compliance.

In Altium Designer, the requirements are managed through the Requirements panel (refer to the Working with Panels page for an overview of working with panels, including general tips and tricks). Placed requirements are available in real-time to collaborating users – those that have shared access to the document – and are saved to the Workspace independently of the project without altering its constituent documents in any way.

Portal Block to Design Project Link

When the various Requirements and Systems Portal elements have been set up for your design project (see Basic Requirements and Systems Portal Setup), its requirements will be available in the Workspace design view when the project has been linked to the Portal’s related System Design Block. This link can be specified using the Link Requirements dialog accessed from the Requirements region of the General tab of the Project Options dialog or the Requirements panel. The Link Requirements dialog includes a hierarchical list of all available requirements projects and their corresponding blocks – incompatible blocks (in gray) cannot be selected. Navigate to and select a suitable block entry and click  to confirm.

The linked requirement will be displayed in the Requirements region of the General tab of the Project Options dialog. The current Project-Block mapping can be changed by clicking the link in this region or removed at any time by clicking the  button.

Workspace Requirements Access

Within the linked project’s design view, the Requirements and Systems Portal Requirements are available from the document view’s Requirements panel. This lists all available Requirements, where a selected Requirements tile shows its information, a link to its instance in the Requirements and Systems Portal, and the Validation settings. Use the  button to create a reference instance in the current document, and the  button to create a general task assigned to a specified Workspace member.

Placing a Requirement

A requirement is placed in the current document using the same process as placing a comment on a point, object (such as a component or line/trace), or a specified area – see Document Commenting for detailed information. The Requirement Identifier link (Req-0001 here) in both the Requirements panel and requirement dialog opens that Requirement entry in the Requirements and Systems Portal.

The same requirement can be placed multiple times. Each instance of a requirement placed in the current design project is listed next to the Placed entry that is shown when the requirement tile is selected in the Requirements panel. Click the link for a requirement instance to open the associated design document.

Creating a Requirement Task

An actionable Workspace task is created for a requirement by selecting the entry's  button in the Requirements panel, and then assigning a Workspace member to the task, entering a task description and confirming with the  button. Requirement tasks are accessed and progressed through the Comments and Tasks panel and the Web Viewer Tasks page.

Verifying Requirements

The verification state of a requirement can be set from the verification menu item () available in its Requirements panel entry and the document requirement dialog. The menu offers the options defined by the Verification and Validation Activity associated with the requirement in the Requirements and Systems Portal.

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Select a verification activity associated with the requirement from the verification menu item () in the requirement dialog or Requirements panel. The menu label indicates the number of verifications completed from the number of verifications associated with the Requirement – here; 0 of 1. Choose a status setting for the verification activity. Note that multiple activities can be associated with a requirement, where each is presented with its own status menu options. The requirement’s verification status is now set to 1 of 1 because the Verified option was selected. Note that the verification will be locked from further changes if the Skipped option is selected.