Where-Used Capabilities

Parent article: Vault-Based Components

The highly relational structure of the data in an Altium Vault lends itself to powerful 'where used' capabilities. At any time, you are able to see where a particular child Item is used, in terms of parent Items in the vault. So for a given domain model, you can quickly identify which component Items reference it. For a given component Item, you can see which board designs it has been used in, which managed schematic sheets, and so on. Conversely, and from a parent Item's perspective, you are able to quickly browse its children.

• For a parent Item, use the Vaults panel's Children aspect view.
• For a child Item, use the Vaults panel's Where-used aspect view.

Where-used functionality enables you to quickly browse parent-child relationships in the vault.

The ability to traverse the content of a vault in this way can offer great benefit, not least of a time-saving nature. For example, if a component is deprecated or made obsolete for any reason, you can quickly identify and pull-up the schematic sheets and board-level designs in which it is placed, and update and re-release those Items as new revisions using another, equivalent approved component.

And why re-invent that proverbial wheel, when you can find a component that you need to use and see which designs it has already been used in. If those designs are at a production state, that component has been proven already and is therefore good-to-go. It can be re-used in your next design with assured confidence.