Altium NEXUS Server

Created: January 15, 2020 | Updated: January 21, 2020

Now reading version 3.0. For the latest, read: Altium NEXUS Server for version 4.1

Altium NEXUS includes a server (the Altium NEXUS Server) for all your managed content - a 'managed content server' if you will, and an integral part of the overall deployed solution. The server works in harmony with the design software element of your Altium NEXUS solution to provide an elegant answer to the question of handling design data with secured integrity. The server not only provides rock-solid, secure storage of data, but also enables re-release of data as distinctly separate revisions - essentially tracking design changes over time, without overwriting any previously released data. It also caters for the lifecycle of the data to be managed, allowing people that need to use the data to see, at-a-glance, what stage the data has reached in its 'life' and therefore what it can be safely used for.

The server is used to manage all managed data, including components, domain models, schematic sheets of circuitry and design templates. Indeed, you can even create and manage your entire design projects directly within the server, with the additional benefit of collaboration support, meaning an entire team can work concurrently on the same board design - even annotating the design with comments. You can even control the working environments of your designers - ensuring that company-wide design standards are enforced and adhered to.

By furnishing a set of reusable design 'building blocks' within the server, you can embark on fresh projects safe in the knowledge that each model, component, and higher-order design element has been ratified and approved for use, with no having to reinvent the wheel as it were. The server becomes both the source and destination of design elements, with each new design utilizing elements released to, and managed through, the server. And by designing only with elements from the server, the integrity of those designs is inherently assured.

Read about Installing the Altium NEXUS Server, Getting Your Altium NEXUS Server Licensed, Working with a Managed Content Server, Accessing Your Server from Altium NEXUS, Details for IT Departments

Server Items

Within the NEXUS Server, each design entity that can be stored, managed, and reused, is represented as a specific type of Item. An Item is uniquely identified within the server and can contain any number of Revisions, where a revision contains the data for that Item. Each time a change is made to the data contained within a revision - which for most Item types can be edited directly within an associated temporary editor - it is committed (or re-released) into a new revision of that Item, ensuring that no existing revision can ever be overwritten, and thereby ensuring the highest integrity.

An Item can have any number of revisions, which are essentially an evolution of that Item over time. A change is made and the new data content is committed/uploaded/released into a new revision. The data stored in each revision of an item is therefore typically different. To identify between these different revisions of an Item, a revision identifier (ID) is used, which in combination with the Item ID creates a unique identifier for each release of an Item. This gives us the Item-Revision.

Another important aspect of an Item Revision is its Lifecycle State. This is another identifier that can be used to quickly assess what stage that revision has currently reached in its life, and what designers are therefore authorized to do with it. Where the Revision reflects design changes made to the Item, the Lifecycle State reflects the state of the item from a business perspective, such as Planned, New From Design, For Production, Obsolete, and so on.

Read about Server Items.

The Explorer Panel

From within Altium NEXUS, component management is streamlined through use of the Components panel and Manufacturer Part Search panel. However, another interface to your server is the Explorer panel. From this panel you can perform many activities, including:

Creating and managing the organizational structure used in the server.
Creating any number of Items, each representative of a design object.
Direct editing and placement of Item Revisions.
Reviewing and managing the lifecycle of Item revisions.
Interrogating the usage of a particular Item revision (Where-Used).
Browsing and managing supply chain information for Component Items.
Downloading stored data, including data generated through the managed release of board design projects.

The Explorer panel becomes your trusty right-hand, presenting a collection of features that can really enhance your productivity when working with the server through Altium NEXUS.

While the majority of your day-to-day working with your server will be through the Components panel or Explorer panel, there will also be occasion when you need to interact with the server through its browser interface - especially for administrative purposes. For more information, see Browser-based Access & Management.

Read about Working with the Explorer Panel.

Direct Editing

The NEXUS Server provides a flexible and secure method of centralizing the storage and management of all types of design data used in Altium NEXUS. From the schematic model to the component, from managed sheets through to completed PCB designs, the NEXUS Server delivers an ideal method of storing and managing your electronic design data.

Many design entities can be edited and released into the initial revision of a corresponding, and newly-created server Item, courtesy of the server's support for direct editing. Direct editing frees you from the shackles of separate version-controlled source data. You can simply edit a supported Item type using a temporary editor loaded with the latest source direct from the server itself. And once editing is complete, the entity is released (or re-released) into a subsequent planned revision of its parent Item, and the temporary editor closed. There are no files on your hard drive, no questioning whether you are working with the correct or latest source, and no having to maintain separate version control software. The NEXUS Server handles it all, with the same great integrity you've come to expect, and in a manner that greatly expedites changes to your data.

And at any stage, you can come back to any revision of a supported Item in the server, and edit it directly. Simply right-click on the revision and choose the Edit command from the context menu. Once again, the temporary editor will open, with the entity contained in the revision opened for editing. Make changes as required, then commit the release of the document into the next revision of the item.

Read about Creating & Editing Items Directly through a Server.

Managed Components

Altium NEXUS, with its unified design approach, has traditionally used a component model that extends across all aspects of the electronics design process. However, to seamlessly fit the process of electronics design into the encapsulating product development process as a whole, this model needs to evolve - extending to cover other aspects including other design processes (in particular MCAD and Industrial Design), as well as business processes (such as procurement and manufacturing) that intersect with the product development process.

This evolved object model is known as the Unified Component Model.

Under this modeling paradigm, 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, Part Choices are used to map the design component to one or more Manufacturer Parts, listed in a Part 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.

These components, along with their part choices, are stored in the NEXUS Server. A component is stored as a series of revisions of a uniquely-identifiable Component Item. Each revision is lifecycle-managed, providing collections of certified components, authorized to be re-instantiated into new design projects, manufactured into prototypes, or used for production runs. In short, a catalog of components implemented through server-based 'libraries'.

Altium NEXUS's Components panel provides a powerful interface with which to interact with all your components - both managed (server-based) and library (file-based). And for your managed components, the panel provides a filter-based parametric (faceted) search capability, for specifying target component parameters. In addition, the panel also offers options to edit a managed component through the Component Editor (in its Single Component Editing mode), view the component in its source server via the Explorer panel, and perform component management functions such as component creation and cloning, or editing the selected component's Part Choices and Type.

By using Altium NEXUS's Manufacturer Part Search panel, you can search for real-world manufactured parts, then acquire those parts into your managed content server. Acquisition involves creating a new managed component - using the Component Editor in its Single Component Editing mode - and releasing to your integral server.

Read about Working with Managed Components.

Private License Service

For organizations that require their Altium NEXUS installations to remain offline - isolated from the internet - the convenience and flexibly of on-demand software licensing can be provided by a localized Private License Server, rather than from the internet-based Altium Licensing Service. The NEXUS Server installation provides just the ticket, through its local Private License Service. It can be configured as a central, or local License Server, and can serve both Altium NEXUS and Altium NEXUS Server licenses over a local network. In addition, a server administrator is able to take full control over the offline leasing of license seats, configure licensing for use by specific roles, and configure a license for Roaming, and much more.

The server's PLS can be configured and used in different modes of operation, as summarized below:

No PLS mode - the server's standard configuration, where its acquired licenses are not made available (served) on the network.
Local PLS mode - both Altium NEXUS and Altium NEXUS Server licenses that have been acquired by the server are served over a network by the server's (local) PLS service.
External PLS mode - the server connects to, and uses, an external PLS service (such as a remote server PLS that has been set up as a central license server) in place of its own PLS service.

Read about Private License Service.

Local Version Control Service

The NEXUS Server installation provides localized (and centralized) version control, courtesy of its Version Control service. This service provides version control possibilities right there where you need them, locally, without searching, or paying for, external VCS management software.

A new installation of the NEXUS Server provides a single Git-based design repository for accommodating all of your managed design projects - and that's it! This avoids any setup and complexity regarding the server's local Version Control service. You have a single design repository - Versioned Storage - for all your designers to access and release into. As such, the VCS page of the server's browser interface becomes purely informational - you cannot add a new repository, and the single Git repository cannot be modified in any way, nor deleted. If you have upgraded your server from Altium NEXUS Server 1.0 (or Altium Vault 3.0), then use of SVN repositories will also be enabled, so that you can continue to use your previous (and established) design flow. In this case, you can continue to create repositories through the local Version Control service (SVN-only), or connect to external repositories (SVN or Git).

By defining design repositories in this centralized fashion, an organization can fully control which repositories its designers can access and use.

Read about Local Version Control Service.

Design Management

The NEXUS Server, in conjunction with Altium NEXUS, brings support for Managed Projects. Managed Projects target the development stage of the project lifecycle, simplifying the creation and ongoing workflow for version controlled projects. Centralized storage under the control of the NEXUS Server also enables this feature to be a foundation for other collaborative services.

Some key benefits to using Managed Projects are:

Simplified storage. No need to make decisions about storage locations. Backup and other basic services are taken care of.
Foundation for collaborative features.
Enforced version control.
Beneficiary of a dedicated commenting system.
Notifications and status. Document status including local modifications is visible to entire design teams.
Concurrent PCB design works without any complex setup.

Management is performed through the Projects page of the server's browser-based interface. New Managed Projects can be created through this interface, or through the Create Project dialog in Altium NEXUS. Alternatively, an existing, non-managed project, can be quickly made available on the server.

Opening a project (by clicking on its name) provides access to a CAD-centric project view in another browser tab, which offers Design, BOM, Manufacturing and Activities 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, which represents the latest version of the source project data rather than a specified release from that project. The Design view can be considered to be a work-in-progress (WIP) view. You can view the base design, or any defined variant thereof.
BOM - view the source project's Bill Of Materials information.
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.
Activities - search, view and access workflow process activities that apply to the selected project, such as design reviews. Use the sub tabs for a selected activity to see its live flow Diagram, related Data and event History.

The beauty of Managed Projects is that they are version controlled by default, and can be collaboratively worked upon without having to worry about shared drives, servers, agreements etc. Version control is handled courtesy of the NEXUS Server's local Version Control service.

Read about Managed Projects.

Part Source Configuration

Each NEXUS Server instance has its own dedicated Part Catalog. This is a managed local part catalog database, dedicated to the management and tracking of manufacturer parts and their associated supplier parts. The catalog is installed as a service (Part Catalog Service), provided through the NEXUS Server platform, and works only with the NEXUS Server.

The local Part Catalog stores items representative of actual Manufacturer Parts, along with one or more items representative of Supplier Parts - the incarnations of those Manufacturer Parts, as sold by the Suppliers/Vendors. Each Supplier Part is a reference to an item in a parts database - either the aggregate parts database of the Altium Parts Provider (which itself interfaces to, and gathers the parts from, enabled Suppliers), or a linked local parts database (ODBC-based).

Which Supplier Databases are actually used - a list of Approved Suppliers - is managed by the NEXUS Server, through the Part Providers page of its browser interface. This facilitates centralized supply chain management, with designers across the entire organization using the same approved list of Suppliers, with which to source supply chain intelligence for parts used in their designs.

Read about Supply Chain Management.

Configuration Management

Facilitating enterprise-level enforcement of a designer's work environment - to ensure that they are following the required standards expected by that organization for design, documentation and production - the NEXUS Server installation provides the Team Configuration Center.

The role of the Team Configuration Center is to give the organization centralized control over the environment its designers operate in. It achieves this through the definition and management of Environment Configurations. These are used to constrain each designer's Altium NEXUS working environment to only use company-ratified design elements, including schematic templates, output job configuration files, workspace preferences, and so on. In other words, it facilitates Centralized Environment Configuration Management.

Any number of environment configurations may be defined through the Center's dedicated browser-based interface. The data used and enforced by each configuration - referred to as Configuration Data Items - are sourced from the NEXUS Server. And by associating each environment configuration with a specific user role, and in turn assigning users to those roles, the correct working environment is loaded into Altium NEXUS as soon as the user signs in to the NEXUS Server. Using this role-based approach ensures that a designer always gets the setup they are entitled to, no matter whether they have their own PC, or are sharing a single PC with fellow designers.

Read about Environment Configuration Management.

Data Acquisition

Altium facilitates the ability for an organization to copy the content they need, between nominated source and target managed content servers - a process referred to simply as Server Data Acquisition. By acquiring design content, ownership is placed firmly in the hands of the receiving organization, who are free to make local modifications and maintain the content as they desire moving forward. And by keeping a link between the acquired data and its original source, intelligent handling of the data can be performed, including notification when the source of any copied content is updated. And no matter if additional releases have been made to an item locally, there is always the possibility to revert to a previous revision from the original source server - all by keeping a link back to the item's original source, or Origin.

Acquisition is performed using the Content Cart dialog. Access to this dialog is made from within the Explorer panel. While browsing the source server from which you wish to obtain data, right-click on the revision of a supported Item type that you wish to acquire (or a folder of components, for example), and choose the Add to Content Cart command from the context menu.

Read about Data Acquisition Service.

Workflows

Altium NEXUS provides a powerful collaborative design environment. Part of that is the support for Workflows, that guide a company's designers through typical, everyday design processes such as:

Requesting new managed parts
Performing project-related activities, such as design reviews or publishing to a PLM
Creation of new managed projects.

Each Workflow that is used to implement a particular design process is created as part of a Process Definition. It can therefore be referred to as that process's underlying Workflow, or simply a Process Workflow.

Processes, and their Workflows, are created and managed through the NEXUS Server's browser interface - by an Administrator of that server. For the three design areas mentioned previously, predefined process workflows are included with your server installation. Some of these are activated for use out-of-the-box. Use these, modify them, or create your own as required, to suit the needs of your company. Others are samples - these cannot be activated and used as is. Each of these is therefore more like a 'template' - edit to suit your company's requirements, name, and save as a new process definition, which you can then activate and use, along with all other definitions.

A powerful Process Workflow Editor provides the flexibility for you to build processes with workflows that can be as simple, or as complex as needed, and in-line with your company's requirements.

When designing in Altium NEXUS, a designer can access and initiate any of the processes that have been activated for use at the administrative level. Interaction with a process - or rather its defined workflow - is through Tasks. A Task relates to a user task defined within the workflow - a point at which action by a user is necessary for the workflow to progress.

Read about Creating & Managing Processes. Read about Defining a Process Workflow. Read about Working with Tasks.

Network Installation Service

The NEXUS Server platform provides a dedicated Network Installation Service. This service, allows an organization to perform installations, or updates to Altium NEXUS, over their local network. The main goals of the Network Installation Service are:

To improve speed of updates - people will download data inside of the local network.
To remove dependency on Internet access for update functionality - it could work in isolated networks, without access to global internet.
To provide the ability to control versions and updates in a centralized way.
To support performing push installations, using Microsoft's Active Directory Group Policy.

The service is accessed through the Installations page of the server's browser interface. Typically you would acquire the products and extensions that you need from Altium's Cloud Repository into your local NEXUS Server, then craft a deployment package for installation across your network. Subsequent updates can be configured automatically, or handcrafted manually for ultimate control over what gets installed on your designer's machines.

As well as being able to download and store products and extensions inside your local NEXUS Server, you can also use this interface to download products and extensions outside of the Server. This ability is included so that you can easily copy an installer onto a portable drive or optical disk, for those situations where the target PC is not accessible over your Local Area Network.

Read about Network Installation Service.

Backup and Recovery

Over time, your NEXUS Server will accommodate a growing, and impressive amount of data. The value of this data cannot be overstated, for it is a mixture of source data that can be re-used in future design projects, as well as data from which past, current, and future products are fabricated and assembled. It is data that has been released and ratified under the highest scrutiny, and stored securely with the upmost integrity. And as with all valuable data, longevity of its integrity is ensured by being able to perform a backup.

The NEXUS Server installation caters for the archival of your server data through the provision of a command-line-driven Backup & Restore tool. The tool's executable - avbackup.exe - is located in the \Program Files (x86)\Altium\Altium NEXUS Server\Tools\BackupTool folder, for a default installation of the NEXUS Server.

Restoring a backup is only possible to the same version of server from which that backup was made. In this respect, it can be a good idea to keep the installer for that server, and corresponding license files, with the backup Zip archive.

Backup and restore using this tool is currently only supported for a NEXUS Server installation using a Firebird database as its back-end.

Read about Backing up and Restoring Your NEXUS Server Installation.