FAQs

You can use Altium Vault to manage just your components, but this is not recommended. One of Altium Vault's greatest strengths is managing everyday PCB work-in-progress, which includes the design data. When properly used, the Vault creates relationship links between all library and design content, facilitating such functionality as 'Where-Used'. This is extremely helpful when identifying duplicate, or errant parts, that may have been mistakenly used in one or more designs.

The SVN repository in which you store your design projects does need to be part of the Vault. Having said that, their are two methods of doing this:

• Internally - using an Subversion repository created through the Vault's local SVN server.
• Externally - linking to an externally-created Subversion repository.

So, if you need your design repository to sit on a different server, or something like that, you can do that with an external repository - setup in the Vault so that the Vault knows where it is. You can then take advantage of the Where-Used functionality.

You can certainly do this. Making local design changes is very much a part of Altium Designer's core functionality. However, this is not recommended. If you were to update that component at some stage, using one of the update features in Altium Designer, it’s going to bring in the next revision from the Vault, which would overwrite any local changes. So it would be far better to make changes to your vault components directly in the Vault.

Altium Vault has a feature called the Content Cart, which is delivered through the Vault's Data Acquisition Service. This allows you to browse the Altium Content Vault and acquire selected components directly into your local Altium Vault.

No, there is currently no way to acquire a local image of the Altium Vault. We are planning on releasing a cloud based implementation, which will remove any internal IT dependencies.

Yes, and this can all be configured through an Output Job Configuration file. The Validate Project stage of the release process is run automatically when one or more Validation-type reports are detected in assigned OutJob file(s). All defined validation output generators, defined in an Output Job file assigned to the data item being released, are run. This includes running any of:

• Differences Report – using the comparator to determine if the source and PCB design documents are correctly in-sync.
• Electrical Rules Check – checking the electrical/drafting validity of the captured source design.
• Design Rules Check – checking the validity of the PCB document in relation to specified board-level design constraints.
• Footprint Comparison Report – comparing footprints on the board against their source library to ensure they are up-to-date, and matched.
• Component State Checking - checking 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 vault; 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.
• Environment Configuration Compliance Check – checking that only data items permitted through the environment configuration available for use by your assigned role (if applicable), are being used. This check can also ensure that all design items are sourced from an Altium Vault.

Yes, if your validation steps fail, then commit and release of the data into the Vault will not happen.

The workflow itself might not be too bad. When working with Vault components, the initial browsing and searching might be a little slow, but once that data is cached, it will become easier. And for designs designs, when you go in and open a managed project, you’re storing and working on it locally.

So, the day-to-day use of Altium Designer shouldn’t be terribly affected. Obviously, having a faster VPN would be better, but we have had people tell us that their VPNs aren’t that great, but they make it work fine because there's not a constant interaction with the Vault.

Yes, everything is local. Everything is behind your firewall, we don’t touch any of that. The only thing that does go out to the internet is the supply chain data, and you don’t even need to necessarily use any of that. If you do want to go out and ping Digikey, Farnell, any of those guys, that’s the only kind of internet access that you would have. Everything else is local.

There is a part request process, but there is no review process for adding or modifying the designs themselves. There’s no overall workflow engine at this point, so in terms of redlining, ECOs, and things like that, they do not exist. There are some markup capabilities that you can use on the designs, that is controlled by the Vault - so you can do some commenting in the designs themselves and grant everybody access to that.

Altium Designer, in conjunction with Altium Vault (3.0 or later) provides a streamlined, simple process to quickly migrate your existing libraries to an Altium Vault - the Library Migrator. The GUI to this process presents an intuitive flow that takes initial selected libraries, and migrates them to a target Altium Vault. Catering for all types of libraries, relating to older component management methodologies - SCHLIB, PCBLIB, INTLIB, DBLIB, SVNDBLIB - the Library Migrator is the perfect solution to quickly building your company's set of vault components, and the many benefits that such components enjoy (high-integrity, lifecycle management, centralized storage and management, where-used functionality, ease of design resuse). And while the migration process can be configured - giving you enhanced control over how that migration is performed - at its most simplistic, you can simply accept the default settings and set the migration in motion within a matter of clicks.

Yes, you can set different permissions for who can do what. You can create a librarian role and also say who can or can’t read (have access to) any folder. You can even create a sandbox folder that some engineers have access to if they want to create their own parts, but then the official released parts can go in a different folder that everybody has access to. So everything is very controllable.

You can move existing designs over into your Altium Vault, but you cannot currently move the existing subversion repository. If you want to move the design data, you have to pull it out and recommit it into the SVN repository in the Altium Vault. So you’d essentially lose history on those designs, and essentially be starting over, but you can pull that data out and move it back in.

You can also convert your components from older component management methodologies - or what we call unmanaged components - to Vault-based components, with automatching capabilities provided through the powerful Item Manager.

Yes, there is a feature offered through the Content Cart that allows you to acquire components from your local Altium Vault, into an Integrated Library (*.IntLib). And when placing components from such an Integrated Library, the actual links are back to the Component Items in the Vault. This gives you the ability to effectively use your company's Vault components in an offline fashion, while ensuring the design still maintains a true connection to those components in the source Vault.

Yes. While management of users by a non-administrative user is not generally possible, they are able to change the profile of their own user, where authentication of that user utilizes the Vault's Built In authentication service - including changing username and password.

Through the Vault's browser interface, an administrative user can kill the session for a user, to forcibly free up a connection. This is performed from the Sessions page of the interface.

Alternatively, and offering a far better long-term solution, simply add more seats (connections), through purchase of additional Client Access Licenses (Altium Vault CAL).

The Altium Vault relies on a number of Microsoft runtime components for successful operation and access, in some situations these may not be present on the target machine. If you receive an error message about a missing library (DLL) when you attempt to sign into an Altium Vault, it indicates that there are missing Microsoft runtime components. To-date, this is only known to occur on Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 Datacenter.

Use this link to download and install these missing components: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/confirmation.aspx?id=29

This error can occur when the Vault is installed on a computer that is also running Microsoft Exchange Server. The installation of the Exchange Server can change the Internet Information Services (IIS) configuration in a way that conflicts with the Vault.

To resolve this, the following changes must be made to the applicationHost.config file:

<handlers accessPolicy="Read, Script">
...

<add name="kerbauth" image="C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\Bin\kerbauth.dll" preCondition="bitness64" />
<add name="WSMan" image="C:\Windows\system32\wsmsvc.dll" preCondition="bitness64" />
<add name="exppw" image="C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\ClientAccess\Owa\auth\exppw.dll" preCondition="bitness64" />
<add name="cafe_exppw" image="C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\FrontEnd\HttpProxy\bin\exppw.dll"  preCondition="bitness64" />

...
</handlers>

For information about the ApplicationHost.config file, refer to this article.

For information on editing the file, refer to this article.

The Altium Content Vault is hosted on an Amazon S3 Server. Your IT department may need to allow access to this server if proxies are employed. Without access, you will not be able to acquire content from the Altium Content Vault, to your own vault, using the Content Cart.

Absolutely. If you have a previous flavor of Vault running on the same PC, ensure that the communication ports are unique. An Altium Vault uses the port 9780 (same as for its Altium Vault Server predecessor), an Altium Personal Vault uses the port 9680, while a legacy Altium Satellite Vault uses port 9880.

You can only be 'signed in' to one Altium Vault at any given time, since you are connecting to a platform of services, rather than to a single Vault service. Typically an organization will have a single Altium Vault installation. However, if more than one Altium Vault is available, simply sign out of one, and sign in to another, as required.

You can of course still connect to older (legacy) Vault technologies - Altium Vault Server (installed on another PC), Altium Personal Vault, Altium Satellite Vault - through the Data Management - Vaults page of the Preferences dialog, in Altium Designer. From the Sign in button's associated drop-down menu, choose the Add Vault (legacy) command.

Yes and No. It all depends whether the Vault component - a Component Item - has associated Part Choices defined for it or not. When a Component Item is created and released, then referred to as a Vault component, it simply represents the engineering, or design view of that component. It is, in essence, a container into which all information used to model that component in the Design Area is stored. This includes links to all requisite domain models (schematic symbol, PCB 2D/3D component, Sim, etc), as well as parametric information. It has great meaning to the designer using it in a board design, but is not meaningful outside of the design arena. To become a truly 'Unified Component', that unites the Design and Supply Chain areas, the Component Item must be mapped to physical, real-world manufactured parts. This is done by specifying Part Choices for the component.

And it is this intelligent mapping of a component - from the traditional electronics design arena into the bigger 'product arena' as seen by the rest of the organization - that turns the humble Vault component into a truly Unified Component!