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“Hands On” Review by Tim Blythman and Altium Designer, which we use to design PCBs and draft circuits, can trace its history back over 30 years to the Australian-designed Protel PCB software. With design complexity increasing, collaboration is becoming even more critical, and this is what Altium 365 aims to achieve. We also have a brief overview of some new features in AD21. A s part of our review of Altium Designer 20 in December 2019 (siliconchip.com.au/Article/12176), we attended the “Altium Roadshow”, which is only one of many events held for Altium subscribers. They also regularly hold ‘webinars’ and other online information and education sessions. As we noted in that review, many people are still using versions of Altium Designer as old as version 14. But us- ers who want to make full use of Altium 365 will need to run Altium Designer 20 or later. Altium 365 You might have seen a glimpse of Altium 365 in our April 2020 Product Showcase (siliconchip.com.au/ Article/13816). That short piece hinted that Altium 365 is pitched at those Where it all began: hands up if you remember the now-30-year-old Autotrax (and its companion Traxedit), seen here running on the first personal computer that SILICON CHIP owned – a 128kb, twin floppy IBM PC! 32 Silicon Chip Australia’s electronics magazine siliconchip.com.au with no CAD tools or experience, but this is far from the full story. Altium 365 (of which Altium 365 Viewer is only a small part) is a cloud-based companion to Altium Designer and provides tools and features which, we think, will be useful to many people. In our review of Altium Designer 20, we noted that being such a small team, we are not sure how we would make use of the cloud features of Altium 365. Most of our PCBs are planned, designed, built and tested by one or two people. With working from home now more common, we decided to look more closely at Altium 365’s features for those occasions when feedback or collaboration are needed. It turns out that it has other features that are very useful to us too. In fact, many people who have never used Altium Designer could make good use of Altium 365. There are four different ways of working with Altium 365. The Viewer is similar to the one built into Altium Designer. You can click on items to see properties and even render and navigate a 3D view of the PCB or assembly. The Viewer can be embedded in an external webpage (for example, on your own website), with configurable features such as a variety of export formats. Naturally, you can’t edit files using the Viewer. The Viewer also lacks the collaborative features of Altium 365. Altium 365 Basic At its simplest level, Altium Viewer allows designs (circuits, PCB etc) to be viewed in a web browser by anyone – see Screen1. You don’t need an Altium subscription or even an Altium Live registration. The Viewer is found at www.altium.com/viewer/ You can go there right now, click on “View Example Project” and get a pretty good idea of what it can do. Altium Viewer allows several CAD and CAM formats to be uploaded and viewed; not just Altium Designer files. For example, Altium Viewer supports loading and viewing EAGLE designs, and support for KiCad files is planned. To use Altium 365 Basic, you need to register on the Altium Live website. The process here is similar to most online services; your account is linked to an email address. If you are currently using Altium Designer, then you most likely have an Altium Live registration already and use it for your Altium license. If you have an Altium subscription, then you can also make use of the Standard version of Altium 365, which includes integration with Altium Designer. To access these services, you need to go to http://365. altium.com/ and log in to your Altium Live account. Apart from the Viewer, Altium 365 is based around the concept of “Workspaces”, which are typically tied to an Altium Licence and thus a specific organisation. The easiest way of getting access to a particular Workspace (and also easily set up an Altium Live login) is to be invited by someone who has access to that Workspace. An invitation sends an email which will also prompt for information to complete the registration process, if that has not already happened. After that, you’ll be taken to the Workspace. Altium 365 Basic is intended for those users who don’t Screen1: even if you don’t have an Altium Live account, you can use Altium 365’s Viewer. It can handle several CAD formats and provides a similar view and interface to Altium Designer. Screen2: the Projects view in the web portal shows a preview of each project and a brief summary, including information about recent changes. Clicking on any project allows it to be viewed, with a similar interface to Altium Designer. Altium 365 Viewer siliconchip.com.au Australia’s electronics magazine January 2021  33 With external parties, it is often desirable to carefully control the way that designs are shared, especially in fields where ‘intellectual property’ is tightly guarded. Rather than having to import a file, the cloud nature of Altium 365 allows projects to be stored and managed online (see Screen2). Typically, a project will be uploaded by someone using Altium Designer. Once a project is opened, the window appears very similar to the Viewer, but with more options, including a function to open it in Altium Designer. Many different views are available in Altium 365 Basic, besides those which are available in Altium Designer. For example, Project History provides a graphical, chronological view of changes that have occurred in a project (as shown in Screen3). Altium 365 Standard have an Altium subscription and don’t use Altium Designer, but work closely with those who do. For example, inside our small organisation, the staff members who lay out our articles do not need to use Altium Designer, but could benefit from being able to view and comment on designs, or even render specific views of a PCB for publication. One of the apparent benefits is being able to share information with those outside your organisation, such as PCB manufacturers and assemblers. Effectively, Altium 365 Standard is available for all Altium Designer 20 users who have a current subscription. It is well integrated into AD20. Apart from logging in to use your license, you just need to activate the Workspace within Altium Designer. Indeed, this is probably the best way to make use of it. To start using Altium 365, click on the cloud icon at upper right and click on the Workspace, which will connect Altium Designer to the Workspace (Screen4). While Altium 365 Basic allows Altium Designer files to be viewed online, Altium 365 Standard also provides the option to make files available online. Unlike other cloud solutions where the files are simply stored elsewhere, a formal version control system (based on the widely used open-source VCS Git) keeps synchronised copies (and backups) both locally and remotely. This means that, for example, others who have access to your Workspace can not only see the current version of the design but can also go back and look at how it evolved, who made what changes, and even ‘undo’ mistaken edits. To use these features, from the Projects Panel, right-click the project name and click the “Make Project Available Online…” option. A dialog box appears, allowing some properties to be set (Screen5). Set the option to Enable Formal Version Control unless you have your own version control system in place. After this, the project moves to the Altium 365 workspace. Some extra status icons appear in the Projects Panel relating to the version control. Some more menu options Screen3: the History feature in the web portal shows a summary of changes to a project, and is a visual guide to the version control, such as edits and releases and who made them. The three-dot buttons in the corner of each panel allow a snapshot to be downloaded or cloned. Screen4: the small cloud icon in the top right corner of Altium Designer can be used to connect to your company’s Workspace and thus Altium 365. Our Workspace is named Concord Pro, reflecting that Altium 365 is a progression of the older Concord platform. The Basic version of Altium 365 provides these menu options for managing your workspace. It’s all very intuitive to navigate and work with. 34 Silicon Chip Australia’s electronics magazine siliconchip.com.au Screen5: connecting Altium Designer to Workspace on Altium 365 adds the option of making projects available online and can provide version control, which is recommended unless you use your own internal version control. relating to version control appear too (see Screen6). Updating the ‘cloud’ version of your project is as simple as saving it, then using the Version Control menu to commit the file or project. If you don’t save, you are prompted to do so, ensuring this happens when needed. At this stage, the files are available in the cloud, but are not necessarily visible to other users in the Workspace. By default, they are not visible to anyone except administrators and the person who uploaded them. This aspect is carefully controlled so that you can limit who can view and edit your files. These features are even handy for people working solo, as they now have access to cloud-backed versions of their designs. It’s useful as a backup if nothing else. Sharing projects with other people can be done with varying degrees of granularity. There are options to provide view-only or full (edit) access, as well as being able to set up groups of people to streamline this process (see Screen7). Once designs have been shared like this, users with Basic access can view the designs. One useful collaborative feature is the ability to place comments on the designs. Comments can be applied to schematics (circuit diagrams) or PCB files, and can be viewed and edited through both Altium Designer and the Altium 365 Basic portal. This streamlines communication between those who have access to Altium Designer and those who do not. Once the issue has been resolved, the comment can be marked as such and it disappears, so as not to clutter the display. Once a PCB design is complete, the design goes through a ‘release’ process, which produces an output job (for example, creating Gerber files). After this, the Manufacture section is populated with the output files, which can also be viewed through the web portal. Sharing As well as integrating with those people who are working siliconchip.com.au Screen6: joining a workspace and enabling version control adds numerous options to the Projects panel. Simply committing the project will prompt for any other actions that need to be done before the project is synchronised and up to date. Screen7: when connected to a workspace, new icons appear that reflect the state of the project, including whether it is correctly synchronised with the online version control. Pushing changes into shared projects is as simple as rightclicking and choosing the correct option; you will be prompted to save if necessary. Australia’s electronics magazine January 2021  35 Screen8: the component search window provides many fields, including some optimised for specific component types. Parts can be compared, including live information like supplier stock levels and prices. on files using Altium 365 Basic, it’s also possible to share designs with people who don’t. In this case, the recipient is sent a link, and the file is made available through the Altium 365 Viewer interface. Either a generic link can be generated (making the file available to anyone who has the link), or the link can be sent directly to a specific person, which also makes it possible for that person to comment. The links expire after 48 hours. Components Managing component and part libraries is also integrated into Altium 365. This makes it easy to monitor component designs, check that they are consistent and current, and manage their life cycle. Once logged in to the Altium 365 workspace in Altium Designer, you have access to the Workspace’s shared component library (see Screen8). This is accessible through the web portal (Altium 365 Basic) too. The Library Migrator menu item under File menu can be used to import a local library into Altium 365. This shared component library is one of the most useful features for us, so once one member of the team has created a component symbol and footprint, anyone can use it from then on. Mechanical integration Altium 365 Standard also offers tools relating to managing workflows. The MCAD Plugins option offers interfaces to Solidworks, Autodesk Inventor and PTC Creo. More similar options might become available in the future. This allows people working on aspects of the mechanical design or even marketing to be involved without requiring a full Altium license. 36 Silicon Chip Our review of Altium Designer 20 covered some of the handy mechanical design features that are now available. Beyond being able to view and import mechanical designs in, say, Solidworks, it’s possible to make edits to the mechanical design and push those changes back to Altium Designer. Changes need to be effected within Altium Designer and saved back into the cloud; these changes can then be checked from within Solidworks. Unfortunately, we don’t use any of these tools, so we weren’t able to test these features out. Altium 365 Pro The kind folks at Altium also allowed us to try an evaluation version of Altium 365 Pro. This works similarly to Altium 365 Standard, integrating Altium Designer 20 with the cloud portal, but offers more features. If you have used Altium Concord Pro or Vault, then you might be familiar with some of the features of Altium 365 Pro. Component management A significant feature of Altium 365 Pro is component management, which goes beyond what is available in the Standard version. These features are available through the Properties panel and the Components panel. Much of what Altium 365 can do with components is drawn from the Octopart database (https://octopart.com/) which is operated by Altium. Octopart aggregates supplier and manufacturer data, which is accessed seamlessly through Altium 365. Altium 365 Pro can also draw on other supply chain information Australia’s electronics magazine siliconchip.com.au Screen9: the Components panel now shows (at the bottom) information about which projects appears (Where Used). This can help streamline component changes and replacements by flagging which projects might need to be changed as a consequence of a component change. Screen10: Altium 365’s component management makes it easier to deal with obsolete parts by flagging the component state and allowing parts to be updated as needed. providers, such as IHS Markit. There’s even the option of customising the progression of the component lifecycle through its various transitions. This can be viewed through the web portal, but can only be set through Altium Designer 20, once it has connected with an Altium 365 Pro workspace. With all libraries and projects connected through the cloud platform, other features become possible. For example, the Component Panel now features a “Where Used” section (Screen9). When a part is selected, this section displays the projects which use a given component. This provides an easy way to deal with part obsolescence or manufacturing problems with a particular component. When a part needs to be replaced or altered, Where Used can quickly identify the affected projects and allow them to be adjusted as necessary (Screen10). This might involve creating a new version of the part, perhaps with a different footprint to correct a manufacturing issue. Or a new part can be substituted once an old part is unavailable. Changes to projects can be tagged with the reason for the change under version control, providing traceability. Component templates Another feature that Altium 365 Pro includes is Component Templates, which are templates for common components such as resistors. The principle is that a circuit can be laid out using template components, which have only the minimum necessary information attached (for example, resistance). This prevents the schematic design from being bogged down with needing information that is not necessary at that stage. The other parameters can be configured later. siliconchip.com.au For example, a resistor can be set to require composition, current rating, diameter or lead pitch (amongst others) or none of these at all. Default values can be set too. Templates are set up with sample data in the Altium 365 Pro workspace, so these can be used immediately. Like some of the other Pro features, this appears to be aimed at larger teams, where one team member might be responsible for drawing the circuit, and another can work independently on choosing the correct parts to use. Parts Requests Another feature which is handy for larger teams, especially those that may have dedicated staff for maintaining component libraries, is Parts Request. As the name suggests, a user can request a part to be created and added to the Library. There are fields for manufacturer part number, request state, component type, date required and room to add attachments (for example, data sheets) and notes. The act of assigning the task triggers an email to the necessary person to initiate the process. This is done through the web portal, so can be initiated by anyone with an Altium Live login. Teams Altium 365 Pro also offers the option to customise and tailor people’s roles (and their capabilities) via team management. Larger organisations might need to create finegrained permissions, especially if there are similar roles within different projects, requiring differing policies. A simplified version of the Teams option exists within the Standard version of Altium 365 Standard, with a limited number of roles available. Australia’s electronics magazine January 2021  37 Screen11: this feature was already available in Altium Designer 20, but we only just found out about it! A keypress (CTRL-W) will show you clearance outlines during interactive routing. Note how the gaps between the pins at lower-right are completely pinched off (but might open up if a narrower track is chosen). No more guessing whether or not a track will fit! Screen12: another new feature of Altium Designer 21 is single sign-on (SSO) support to streamline users logging in. This allows people to use their usual company credentials to log in to an existing Altium Live account (giving access to the company license to use the software) Cost Altium has a simple price model for Altium 365 Pro. It is $500 per year for each ‘seat’ that you have for Altium Designer. It can only be applied to all seats within a given license. Note that you could have more people than seats; the seat number sets the maximum number of people that can use the software simultaneously. There are servers located around the globe. Currently, Australian clients connect to a server in Singapore, although that might change in the future. We think that most Altium users could benefit from using Altium 365 Pro, but those who will get the most out of it will be larger organisations, who have the most to gain from the Pro features. Working from home Now with many people working from home (indeed, I’m writing this at home), a state of affairs that could continue for a while (or perhaps indefinitely), using tools like Altium 365 to keep teams working smoothly together makes a lot of sense. Even in our small team, we found that using Altium 365 was quicker and easier than trying to package and email projects or use a shared drive; the web interface works as intuitively as Altium Designer and the integration between the two is excellent. We are in the process of moving our library into the shared library in our Altium 365 workspace. That will allow us to synchronise added parts more smoothly than when we were working in the same office! Altium Designer 21 Many of the changes in Altium Designer 20 were intended to smooth the way for new features to appear in future releases. Some of these new features make an appearance in Altium Designer 21. One such feature is dynamic polygons. Instead of having to repour polygons (large copper areas) manually, the PCB editor will do it as needed. 38 Silicon Chip This might sound like a minor feature, but it will certainly make working on large PCBs with ground and power planes less of a hassle. Interactive routing will also check for signal integrity whilst routing is occurring. This is handy for those working with differential pairs and other high-speed designs. Around 50% of Altium users work on designs operating at or above 1GHz, and they stand to benefit the most from this feature. Also, length tuning options now include trombone and sawtooth patterns. Altium Designer 20 introduced an improved simulation engine, and AD21 makes better use of it. There is now a Simulation Dashboard which operates somewhat like a software wizard, stepping through the stages needed to set up and run simulations. AD21 also has a generic simulator library for many standard component types. Design Rules AD21 can define design rules on a per-object basis, and objects have rules as characteristics. This is in addition to the existing Design Rules window and can be found by switching to Document view or by adding a Design Rule to a selected object. Flex PCBs Support for flexible (and mixed rigid/flex) PCBs continues to improve. It’s still a bit more expensive to get these made than standard, rigid fibreglass PCBs, but Altium and many manufacturers are embracing the possibilities. With AD21, it is possible to add more complex bends to flexible PCB designs and then animate these in the 3D view (using the ‘5’ key shortcut). This is a great aid to visualising that flexible designs are correct. These different views can be captured and used in the Draftsman drawing creator to help others to understand the intended product. As we’ve heard Altium say before, this continuous improvement is necessary for them to stay competitive. We Australia’s electronics magazine siliconchip.com.au Helping to put you in Control RG-9 Optical Rain Sensor Hydreon RG-9 Solid State Rain Sensor is a rainfall sensing device intended to detect and communicate when a pre-selected rain intensity has been reached. SKU: HYS-005 Altium 365 currently integrates with three different mechanical CAD platforms. Changes can be made in MCAD and pushed back to Altium, for example if the mechanical team need to make changes to the board shape or mounting holes. Price: $99.00 ea + GST Solar Temperature Controller Designed for solar water heating applications. Two NTC-type temperature sensor inputs and two control output. 12 to 30 VDC Powered. SKU: CET-036 Price: $122.80 ea + GST look forward to using these new features. Large Temperature Display Another useful feature While investigating AD21, we also discovered some useful features introduced in AD20 that we didn’t know about. During interactive routing, it is possible to display clearance boundaries (CTRL-W key shortcut or as an option while routing is paused with TAB) – see Screen11. Large Temperature Indicator with range -19.9 to 99.0 °C. SKU: HNI-080 Price: $315.00 ea + GST Summary Altium 365 strikes a good balance for a cloud platform. The usual criticism is of losing control of one’s files, but Altium’s version control ensures that both local and cloud copies are synchronised and backed up. Indeed, simply having an automatic online backup of your local files is a handy feature. Many of the useful cloud features are available for free with the Viewer and Basic platforms, or at no extra cost (beyond licensing Altium Designer) for the Standard platform. For securely sharing (and keeping copies) of files and projects, the experience is quite seamless. We’ll definitely make good use of the shared component library, as this is one aspect of PCB design that can quickly become fragmented even within a small team. A single, shared library will be much easier to maintain, and will ensure that a consistent style is maintained between our designs. It will also mean that if one of us discovers an error and fixes it, it will be fixed for us all. With it becoming easier to import components from online sources, we expect to spend less time creating and managing components in the future. For those who don’t have an Altium licence, it’s now possible to try out many of its features at no cost with Altium 365 Viewer. We definitely recommend that anyone that uses Altium Designer have a look at Altium 365, given that they can take advantage of the features of the Standard version at no additional cost. A good way to start is to join one of the frequent webinars that are available to Altium license holders. For more information, visit http://365.altium.com/ Thanks to Altium for providing us with a trial of Altium SC 365 Pro for our review. siliconchip.com.au NEMA 42 Open-Loop Stepper Motor Large 20NM single shaft NEMA 42, 2 phase bipolar stepper motor with 20.0 N.m of holding torque. Rated at 6 A phase current, weighing 8.4 kg with 150 mm body length and 21.55 mm shaft diameter. SKU: MOT-176 Price: $307.30 ea + GST 1-Wire Digital Temperature Sensor DS18B20 Temperature Sensor with copper screw clip probe and a 3 metre cable. Connector is an option. SKU: GJS-006 Price: $23.95 ea + GST Wind Speed Sensor 0-10VDC Output Easy to use wind speed sensor up 60m/sec with 0 to 10VDC signal output and 1.5 meter cable. SKU: RKS-002 Price: $169.95 ea + GST Raw & Waste Water Level Sensor 0-10m with 20m Cable 2 wire 4 to 20 mA liquid level sensor 0-10m. Suitable for raw and waste water. Supplied with 20m cable. SKU: IBP-110 Price: $429.00 ea + GST For Wholesale prices Contact Ocean Controls Ph: (03) 9708 2390 oceancontrols.com.au Prices are subjected to change without notice. Australia’s electronics magazine January 2021  39