Multi person work on one PCB - Altium DXP 2004

[maroni]

Hi all,

Could you tell me. Do you work in multi person on one PCB in Altium Designer
2004? Do you route PCB in the same time on one layout? Do you work in this
case in Altium

Thank you for our help

 

[Brad Velander]

I assume that you are asking about multiple persons working on the file at
the same time, not over different time periods.

What you are asking cannot be done with any reasonable assurance of no
troubles.
There may be methods of doing this but the product is not intended for that
type of use, plain and simple. It isn't a $30k - $60k+ UNIX package.

 

[Joel Kolstad]

What you are asking cannot be done with any reasonable assurance of no
troubles.

Most decent programs will put up a dialog stating that someone else is using
the program, and "would you like to open a read-only copy of the file?"

 

[Christopher Ott]

I assume that you are asking about multiple persons working on the file at
the same time, not over different time periods.

What you are asking cannot be done with any reasonable assurance of no
troubles.
There may be methods of doing this but the product is not intended for
that type of use, plain and simple. It isn't a $30k - $60k+ UNIX package.

Protel allows Design Teams to work on the same project, but not on the same
file. For example someone could work on the schematic, and someone else
could work on the PCB of the same open Design (Protel used a single .ddb
file to keep all the projects in). I'm not aware of any PC based layout
program that allows multiple seats to simultaneously work on the same open
PCB.

An Altium sales rep could answer this pretty quickly. And the cool thing is
that they never, ever, ever, ever, ever lose your phone number. In fact they
will call monthly just to make sure it hasn't changed, and to verify you
don't want to upgrade.

Chris

 

[Brad Velander]

As does Protel/Altium software, Joel.

 

[Joel Kolstad]

Thanks Brad, good to know.

As does Protel/Altium software, Joel.

 

[Marra]

Thanks Brad, good to know.

Windows gets upset at numerous people trying to update the same file.
The only around it would be to split the project into 2 PCB's (if
possible) and put them on the same panel later.

 

[Joel Kolstad]

Windows gets upset at numerous people trying to update the same file.

That isn't really true. Windows (and other OSes) have plenty of fancy file
locking mechanisms available, whereby you can completely lock a file, lock
certain poritions of it, made various parts read only and others read/write,
etc. -- it's just that in many cases there's no particular need for them. The
point here is that Windows is perfectly happy to let numerous processes
(users) update a single file simultaneously, but the onous is on the
application to insure that doing this "makes sense."

 

[Marra]

Its not possible for 2 applications to alter the same file and send it
back to disc.
You would end up with the last write overwriting the first one.

Most applications have a very simple view of files.
You read it, modify it, the write it back.

Microsoft are one of the few companies that keeps looking at files to
see if they have been updated since it was loaded.
Its a big overhead in software and most programmers dont do it.

 

[Joel Kolstad]

Its not possible for 2 applications to alter the same file and send it
back to disc.
You would end up with the last write overwriting the first one.

Sure, but this isn't necessarily a bad thing. I was just pointing out that
operating systems have provisions for all sort of fancy file-locking
semantics, and it's up to the application software to make use of these in a
meaningful manner.

Most applications have a very simple view of files.
You read it, modify it, the write it back.

Agreed, many applications do take this approach.

Microsoft are one of the few companies that keeps looking at files to
see if they have been updated since it was loaded.
Its a big overhead in software and most programmers dont do it.

Just "listening" for file modification events is actually not particularly
difficult at all... at least if you've already built yourself some GUI-based
program that has to listen for various system events anyway. Then putting up
a "Ignore or reload?" dialog and firing off a re-load events is probably no
more than 25-50 lines of code total.

---Joel

 

[Brad Velander]

Joel,
Since you always seem so interested in various CAD system comments. On
the issues you are discussing, Protel P99SE/Altium AD does this fairly well.
It will allow multiple users to open single files, notifying each that there
are others with the same file open. Should one of the parties revise and
save the file, the program notifies everyone of the change. It then suggests
that they may want to update their files to reflect the recently saved
changes.

This does not allow for multiple users to work on the same design file
though. There are manners by which multiple Protel/Altium designers can work
on the files but it is the same for each and every CAD package. Manually
divide and conquer, then paste the various finished blocks back together. It
is workable but requires tremendous caution, great communication and
excellent cooperation.

 

[Marra]

Joel,
Since you always seem so interested in various CAD system comments. On
the issues you are discussing, Protel P99SE/Altium AD does this fairly well.
It will allow multiple users to open single files, notifying each that there
are others with the same file open. Should one of the parties revise and
save the file, the program notifies everyone of the change. It then suggests
that they may want to update their files to reflect the recently saved
changes.

This does not allow for multiple users to work on the same design file
though. There are manners by which multiple Protel/Altium designers can work
on the files but it is the same for each and every CAD package. Manually
divide and conquer, then paste the various finished blocks back together. It
is workable but requires tremendous caution, great communication and
excellent cooperation.

But this doesnt work !
What if 2 people at the same time modify a file?
Which one should the system take as being the right one
Point proved !

 

[Brad Velander]

Marra,
It does work for monitoring file status when multiple users access the
same file. I have never had the file status monitoring in Protel/Altium CAD
products fail when users access the same file. Your proven point, was
already raised as not being a feasible expectation with most PC
(Windows/DOS) CAD systems. So you proved what point, that previous posters
comments were already right?

You seem to enjoy making obtuse remarks or is it just to listen to
yourself talk?

 

[Charlie Edmondson]

ok, on the idea of multi-person work on a PCB.

What you would need would be a multi-window application, where each
individual is actually working on the same 'internal' database. It
would necessitate a lot of network action, as each users manipulations
of the data would need to IMMEDIATELY appear in all other users virtual
database. It might actually be doable, but would get real interesting
as the user count went up!

Charlie

 

[Joel Kolstad]

What you would need would be a multi-window application, where each
individual is actually working on the same 'internal' database. It would
necessitate a lot of network action, as each users manipulations of the data
would need to IMMEDIATELY appear in all other users virtual database. It
might actually be doable, but would get real interesting as the user count
went up!

If Cadence is interested in doing this, perhaps they could hire some of the
programmers from, e.g., Everquest or one of the other massively multiplayer
games? Now *there's* a difficult "simultaneous access" problem: Even though
the games are split across many servers, there's typically still thousands of
users accessing the same "zone" whereby any changes they make have to be
propagated to everyone else if they're relevant.

Altium sounds like it's one step ahead of ORCAD in that Brad tells us it keeps
listening for file changes even after you've opened a read only copy because
Joe down the hallway is modifiyng the schematic. As far as I can tell, ORCAD
tells you just when you try to open the file that it's read-only or nothing,
and after that it quits listening for file update messages. I'm not
complaining though -- while ORCAD's behavior in this regard is about the
minimum I'd expect, it's also adequate for my uses.

---Joel

 

[Brad Velander]

Joel,
Don't know if I said something that you interpretted as multiple file
openings being "read only" but that was not the intent. The files are all
'live' unless you have taken some other measure to make them read only. Any
user could save their copy and destroy anybody else's copy.

A user can modify their copy that they are viewing and save the file,
thus overwriting the original copy they had first opened. A user that opened
an earlier copy and didn't modify it could then save and overwrite any newer
saved versions.
So as Marra stressed it is not without jeapardy. However it does monitor
the file status, alert multiple users and then advise them when the file is
modified allowing them to update their copy to the last saved version.

I see this all the time as both me and our other designer unknowingly
access our company libraries to add new parts or modify parts
simultaneously. With our libraires divided up between different
sub-libraries within the P99SE DDB file format, we can modify and save
different sub-libraries simultaneously but if we monitor the file status
messages and take heed, it keeps us from undesired modifications of the same
libraries undoing each others changes. With DXP\AD I think that capability
is still viable with most files because they should still be doing the
monitoring, I haven't heard from any of the users of the newer versions that
this was undone on their development path.

 

[Joel Kolstad]

Hi Brad,

Don't know if I said something that you interpretted as multiple file
openings being "read only" but that was not the intent. The files are all
'live' unless you have taken some other measure to make them read only. Any
user could save their copy and destroy anybody else's copy.

Ah, thanks for the clarification; my mistake.

---Joel

 

[Arash Partow]

I'm not aware of any PC based layout program that allows multiple

seats to simultaneously work on the same open PCB.

Offerings form both Mentor and Cadence offer team based design
solutions. Expedition for example provides a client/server
architecture where by a server is setup, the base PCB is fed into it,
people are then designated areas on the pcb (boundaries are then
administered via the server. people from other areas wanting to route
into your area are blocked off until you "ok" their routes or
placements.

Because your routing actions are registered with the server there is
the added benefit of having two different source control views, one
is your local/incremental view, and one of the "universal/holistic"
view,
essentially every action is given a unique time-stamp that is
administered by the server, from that the whole routing process can be
replayed, diff'ed etc either as a whole or as specific couplings,
more interestingly this can help to efficiently compute the total
amount of work any one individual has committed to the PCB.

That said from personal experience, I do not believe Altium Designer
will have this functionality until some serious refactoring is done
in both their PCB back-end logic and drawing logic.




Arash Partow
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