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Parent page: System & Environment Panels
The Explorer panel gives access to data stored in a server.
The Explorer panel is the primary interface between Altium Designer and a connected managed content server, making it an integral part of the Design Data Management System. A managed content server stores your valuable company design data, including components, managed sheets and templates, and completed designs. From the Explorer panel, you create and manage the organizational structure used in the managed content server and also create any number of Items, each representative of a design-side object. From the panel you also can access detailed Item information and manage the revision and lifecycle settings for the Items well as where-used and supply chain detail.
To display the Explorer panel, click the Panels button on the bottom-right of the workspace then select Explorer. Alternatively, you can access the panel through the View » Panels » Explorer.
The Explorer panel can only interface to one server at a time. The field at the top-left of the panel indicates the currently open server – the server whose content you will be able to browse and modify. To refresh the content display for the active server, click the icon at the end of the Address Bar or right-click in the Server Folders region then select Refresh Server.
Use the drop-down arrow to the right of the server name or click on the server name itself to select a different server.
Maintain order within a server by creating a tree of folders for the various Items stored in the server. A number of folder types are available. Use these folders to categorize the server content. Right-click in the Server Folders region of the panel to add folders and define a storage structure of folders and sub-folders that suits your organization.
The right-click menu includes commands for defining a folder hierarchy. Note that the options change depending where you click.
You have full control over the folder type and it can be changed at any time by right-clicking on a folder then selecting Properties to open the Edit Folder dialog. For more information on the different folder types available for use in a server, click here.
When you add or edit a folder a dialog will appear in which you can define the properties of the folder. The content of the dialog is the same whether a top-level or sub-folder is being added.
The dialog presents the following folder-related properties:
Item Naming Scheme – this field provides a set of default naming schemes that can be used to quickly define the unique ID for any item subsequently created within the folder. Using a default naming scheme, the software will automatically assign the next available unique ID based on that scheme, having scanned the entire server and identifiers of existing items. You can create your own scheme for a folder by typing it within the field, ensuring that the variable portion is enclosed in curly braces (e.g., SYMBOL-001-{J000
}). See the Defining Naming Schemes for Item Revisions page for more information.
You can navigate the content in a server in several ways:
Server folders can be moved to a different location within a server's folder structure in the following ways:
A folder can only be deleted if it is empty, i.e. it contains no sub-folders or items. To delete a folder, right-click then select Delete Folder.
Each entity that is stored in the server is called an Item. To support the need to be able to update an Item over time, what is actually stored in the server is a series of Item Revisions that are specific revisions of that Item whose name is based on the chosen Revision Naming Scheme. Each new Item is created in a folder and once you have defined the required folders within a server, you can create new Items in the selected folder in the Item region of the panel.
Refer to the Server Items page to learn more about server items.
You can configure the revisions that are displayed in the panel by clicking the to access a drop-down of revision choices.
For each Item revision in a server, the Explorer panel allows you to browse different aspects of that revision, where applicable. This is done using one or more views for that revision by using the tabs at the bottom of the panel.
The top-level view is the Preview. Click additional tabs to view more information (the available tabs will depend upon the type of Item that is currently selected):
Browse different aspects of an Item revision using its associated views.
Various commands are available from right-click menus in the panel. The exact listing of commands will depend on the region of the panel in which you right-click and the object currently in focus within that region. The following sections cover the commands available.
Planned
state.New From Design
state and adhering to the default Structured Lifecycle With Approvals
lifecycle definition, two commands will appear: Set Ready for Prototype Approval
and Abandon Design
.01.A.1
is the current Item Revision, then the next Item Revision to be established using this command will be 01.A.2
).01.A.1
is the current Item Revision, then the next Item Revision to be established using this command will be 01.B.1
).01.A.1
is the current Item Revision, then the next Item Revision to be established using this command will be 02.A.1
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Copyright © 2019 Altium Limited
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