Item Revision Comparison

Modified by Jason Howie on May 31, 2017

Using the power of Altium Designer's native file format comparison technology, Altium Vault 2.6 now supports the visual comparison of two revisions - of the same, or different Items - for a range of supported content types, directly from within the Vaults panel.

Supported Content Types

Revisions of Items of the following content types can be compared:

Component Items (altium-component)
Schematic Symbol Items (altium-symbol)
PCB Component Items (altium-pcb-component)
Managed Schematic Sheet Items (altium-schematic-sheet)
Schematic Template Items (altium-schematic-template)
Released Board Content (altium-pcb-blank, altium-pcb-assembly)

Feature Access

Within the Vaults panel, browse to the relevant folder, select the two Item-Revisions that you wish to compare, then right-click and choose Operations » Compare from the context menu.

Accessing the Compare feature - in this case for two revisions of the same Component Item.

Comparing Two Component Item Revisions

When comparing two revisions of Schematic Symbol Items, after clicking Compare a sequence of events takes place:

The referenced PCB Component Item revisions are compared.
The referenced Schematic Symbol Item revisions are compared.
The parameteric data for the two Component Item revisions are compared.

The results of the comparison are presented in the Compare Component Revisions dialog.

Example comparison of two revisions of a Component Item.

The dialog is divided into three distinct sections, showing the results of comparsion for the parametric data, footprints, and symbols. The following icons are used:

- no difference exists between the parameter value/footprint/symbol for the two compared Component Item revisions.
- a difference has been detected in the parameter value/footprint/symbol between the two compared Component Item revisions.

For parameter value comparisons, you can opt to show only the differences, by disabling the Show unchanged option, above the list.

For footprints, where there is a detected difference, you can run a more detailed comparison by clicking the Compare control. See Comparing Two PCB Component Model Item Revisions for more information on what happens with this type of comparison.

Comparing Two Symbol Item Revisions

When comparing two revisions of Schematic Symbol Items, after clicking Compare a graphical comparison is made and the differences detected listed in the Differences panel. The SchLib documents for the two revisions are opened within the workspace - by displaying them side by side in the design editor window, you can peruse the differences graphically. Clicking on a top-level folder for a detected difference will highlight that difference on both documents simultaneously.

This is the same functionality as if running the Project » Show Physical Differences command on the two source documents.

Example comparison of two revisions of a Schematic Symbol Item.

Comparing Two PCB Component Model Item Revisions

When comparing two revisions of PCB Component Items, after clicking Compare a graphical comparison is made and the differences detected listed in the Compare Components dialog.

This is similar comparison functionality to that when running the Tools » Update From PCB Libraries command, which detects the differences between a placed instance of a footprint, and its source in the relevant PCB Library.

Note that the PcbLib documents for the two revisions are not opened for perusal in the workspace.

Example comparison of two revisions of a PCB Component Item.

The footprint is divided up into square cells and each cell has been analyzed for the differences. Cells where differences exist are shown in full color, with the differences highlighted. The Layer tabs show how many primitive objects have differences for each layer that was compared, and clicking on a tab allows you to browse the differences more thoroughly.

Comparing Two Managed Sheet Item Revisions

When comparing two revisions of Managed Schematic Sheet Items, after clicking Compare a graphical comparison is made and the differences detected listed in the Differences panel. The SchDoc documents for the two revisions are opened within the workspace - by displaying them side by side in the design editor window, you can peruse the differences graphically. Clicking on a top-level folder for a detected difference will highlight that difference on both documents simultaneously.

This is the same functionality as if running the Project » Show Physical Differences command on the two source documents.

Example comparison of two revisions of a Managed Schematic Sheet Item.

Comparing Two Schematic Template Item Revisions

When comparing two revisions of Schematic Template Items, after clicking Compare a graphical comparison is made and the differences detected listed in the Differences panel. The SchDot documents for the two revisions are opened within the workspace - by displaying them side by side in the design editor window, you can peruse the differences graphically. Clicking on a top-level folder for a detected difference will highlight that difference on both documents simultaneously.

This is the same functionality as if running the Project » Show Physical Differences command on the two source documents.

Example comparison of two revisions of different Schematic Template Items.

Comparing Released Board Content

This will simply be a comparsion of the generated file structure, and a check of the files within that structure.