Altium introducing new component management

Altium’s vault technology provides the framework to manage components at the engineering level, in the design, and across the design and release domains. It extends existing models of storing and managing ECAD component data to capture the engineering and business intelligence now needed to make real sense of the component management challenges engineers and designers face.

This new ‘Unified Component’ model represents the fourth generation of libraries for Altium Designer, which have evolved as follows:

• First Generation – the humble Schematic and PCB library models
• Second Generation – the Integrated Component model with all design models compiled into a single package
• Third Generation –Database Libraries and version-controlled Database Libraries, often termed 'Table-Based Libraries' with all information for the components stored in a format external to Altium Designer such as ODBC, ADO, or an Excel spreadsheet
• Fourth Generation – the 'next generation', ‘Unified Component’ model now evolved to provide representation not only in the engineering domain for the designer, but also in the wider product design space accessed by the procurement and manufacturing teams

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The Unified Component Model
Altium’s ‘Unified Component’ model effectively maps the concept of a design component – in the traditional electronics design space – to the component as seen by the rest of the organization in the bigger 'product space'. This truly 'Unified Component' model not only represents the component in the different design domains but also facilitates choices of the desired physical components – real-world manufactured items – at design-time, offering a significant improvement in terms of procurement cost and time, when manufacturing the assembled product.

The design component, as seen by the designer, is separated from the manufacturer and/or vendor parts. This information is not defined as part of the component. Instead, a separate document is used to map the design component to one or more manufacturer parts, listed in a Global Parts Catalog, which in turn can be mapped to one or more vendor parts, allowing the designer to state up-front, what real parts can be used for any given design component used in a design.

And the components themselves, along with their part choices, are stored in a centralized repository – a Vault – that effectively provides the common ground between the two sides, the ‘connecting door’ through that virtual brick wall!

The vault facilitates the secure handling of data with high integrity, while providing both designer and supply chain access to that data as needed. No external liaising through email or phone calls. The information required is specified for both sides to see and act upon.

This new system includes:

• A powerful new ‘where-used’ system to track components across any design or release document. Altium Designer 10's new Vault technology brings together component information and library data, with the designs and releases that use those components. This powerful new system makes it possible to track where any component might be used across any design.

• Powerful Revision and Lifecycle management capability down to the level of components and individual component models. Altium Designer 10 allows parts revision and approval processes within the design environment.

• A new system for the live linking of component to the supply chain. Altium Designer 10's new live supplier-linking system maintains real-time links to supply chains and provides real time updates to pricing and availability information as changes occur at any stage along the way.

• A new component model to capture the intelligence behind part choices. Altium Designer 10 introduces a new, higher level model of the component object, separating the engineering part from the manufacturer or vendor parts. It's through a series of Part Choices that the engineering component can be mapped to one or many manufacturer or vendor parts. This makes it possible to capture the concept of parts equivalents and use the engineering intelligence behind the decisions experienced engineers make every day.