Management of a Specific Project in Altium Concord Pro

Parent page: Managed Projects

Altium Concord Pro provides an advanced, manufacturing orientated CAD-centric view of the project, encompassed in the browser interface Projects Management page. This management interface offers Design, BOM and Manufacturing view options:

• Design – display and navigate source project design documents, view design object properties and place review comments. This view uses the Web Review interface. This view is for the latest version of the source project data, rather than a specified release from that project, and so could be considered to be a work-in-progress (WIP) view.
• BOM – view the source project's current Bill Of Materials information, derived from its design documents and an ActiveBOM document if included.
• Manufacturing – view the releases for the project. Access is provided for opening a release, which will be presented on a separate tab through a Manufacturing Portal. From this portal you can view and navigate the released Assembly and Fabrication data, inspect the BOM, and ultimately download the data into a manufacturing Build Package.

The Projects Management page is opened from Concord Pro's Projects page by selecting the Open option from the ellipsis menu () menu associated with the project, or by selected the project and opening it from the main ellipsis menu. You also can open a project by double-clicking on its entry. The page will open in a new browser tab.

Accessing the CAD-centric Projects Management page for a project.

The following sections take a closer look at the three views into the project design and its data, presented on the Projects Management page.

Design

Related page: Web Review

The Design view provides interactive visual access to the project's design documents, property data for objects within those documents, and the ability to collaboratively comment on definable document locations. This view is for the latest version of the source project data, rather than a specified release from that project, and so could be considered to be a work-in-progress (WIP) view.

The Design view utilizes Altium's Web Review functionality to provide an immersive and interactive experience for reviewing the source schematic and PCB documents in your design project. Shown here is a schematic – hover over the image to see the PCB.

Based on an advanced web graphics engine and interface – Web Review – you are provided with all the features needed to locate and visually inspect the design and its objects. The view also includes fully rendered 2D and 3D PCB layout views, object search and select capabilities, and tree-based design document navigation. Its additional information pane provides an interface to the active Comments system – which dynamically interacts with the design space – and a comprehensive properties listing for any selected design object.

BOM

The BOM view allows you to interactively examine work-in-progress (WIP) BOM data extracted from the design documents, including entries for Manufacturer and Supplier parts data derived from a project's ActiveBOM document (where available). When an ActiveBOM document is part of the design project, each BOM part entry () will include the primary Manufacturer part () and Supplier part () information in a hierarchical view – select an entry to see further details in the side pane.

The BOM in this view is for the latest version of the source project data, whereas the BOM listing under the Manufacturing view (see below) represents the data for a specified release from that project.

The BOM view enables you to examine the BOM data for the latest version of the source (WIP) project data.

When your design uses managed components, an indicator is used (to the left of the component designator entry) to reflect the revision status of that component:

– Current (the latest revision of the component is being used).

– Historical (a previous revision of the component, and not the latest, is being used).

Manufacturing

The Manufacturing view allows you to view project data packages released from the design space, which can be individually opened for examination as interactive Fabrication, Assembly and BOM views.

The listing includes project release packages generated from the design space (see Releasing a Design), where each package incorporates the released Source, Fabrication and Assembly data. Select the Open option from the ellipsis menu () associated with a Release package entry to inspect it in a dedicated Manufacturing Portal browser tab, as outlined in the section that follows.

The Manufacturing view gives you access to the released data packages, and the ability to open a package for closer inspection through a dedicated Manufacturing Portal.

Manufacturing Portal

An opened project release is presented in a new Manufacturing Portal browser tab and incorporates further sub-views:

• Fabrication – the PCB fabrication view applies the Web Review interface to show a 2D rendering of the board layout. Standard review features include Layer Visibility selection, Comment markup, object search and object property data.

• Assembly – the PCB assembly view applies the Web Review interface to show a 3D rendering of the board layout. The view may be zoomed, panned and angled to provide a realistic graphical view into the PCB and its constituent objects.

• BOM – the BOM view provides a grid style listing of parts included in the design release, which when selected populate the side information pane with property data for that part. BOM data is extracted from the design source data or an ActiveBOM document if included in the project. In the latter case, each BOM part entry () will include the primary Manufacturer part () and Supplier part () information in a hierarchical view, as available from the ActiveBOM document – select an entry to see further details in the side pane.

Click the button in the upper margin to download a Build Package for the currently opened project release, which can then be passed to manufacturing to fabricate and assemble the board. The Build Package is a Zip archive containing individual Zip archives for the packages contained in the release.

Example showing a downloaded Build Package for a project release currently being inspected through the Manufacturing Portal.