Altium Designer Viewer - Home Page
Contents
The Home page within Altium Designer Viewer provides a 'central hub' from which to access many common tasks and support resources. The page is designed to present relevant information in a clear, concise and powerful way – giving you streamlined access to routinely used areas of the software, such as account sign-in and recently viewed documents, as well as offering additional information and resources when you are signed in to your Altium account.
Access the Home page using the View»Home command (shortcut: V, H), or by clicking the 
button on the Navigation toolbar.
Example content on Altium Designer Viewer's Home page.
The following sections detail the various regions of the page. Where content and/or interaction with content requires you to be signed in to your Altium account, indication of this is given.
Page Banner
This region, at the top of the page, is used to reflect whether or not you are currently signed in to your Altium account, through the secure Altium portal. If you are not currently signed in, the text in the banner will read Not signed in. If you sign-in to your account, this text will change to Signing in and then finally YourName is signed in.
The Home page will reflect your account sign-in status.
Live Web View (Requires Sign-In)
This region of the page provides a 'portal' into Altium web-based content. The information is presented only when you are signed in to your Altium account. What's more, the content in the view is dynamic, with relevant information on design issues and solutions, features and late-breaking design news and videos, changing over time – truly a case of "watch this space"!
Sign-in to access live web-based resources.
If you are not currently signed in to your Altium account, this region of the page will simply provide a notice to that effect, and a message guiding you to sign in to be able to access the full complement of Altium Designer Viewer's support resources. If you do not have an account with Altium, click on the Create Account option, in the My Account region of the page, to setup an account.
My Account Pane
This area of the page provides controls for signing into (or out of) your Altium account. Click on the Account Preferences option to quickly access the System – Account Management page of the Preferences dialog, from where you can specify your sign-in details (at the system level) and also which Altium Account Management Server (Altium portal) you connect to.
If you have forgotten your password, simply click the Forgotten Password? option to access the Reset Password dialog. Simply enter your user name (your account email address) and click the Reset Password button. A temporary password will be created and mailed to that email address. Use this to sign in – you will be prompted to create a new password at that time.
If you do not have an account with Altium, click on the Create Account option to access the Setup Account page. Fill out the required details (mandatory fields have a red vertical bar to their left) and click the Register button. Upon successful registration, a confirmation dialog will appear and an email with your new Altium Account credentials will be sent to the email address you have provided.
When creating a new account, if you enter a value for the Company field, that entry will be used as the name for the account when it is created. If this field is left blank, the account will be named using the First Name and Last Name entries.
The My Account pane provides controls to quickly access your account or register to create a new one.
Software Updates Pane (Requires Sign-In)
This area of the page presents a summary of the current version of Altium Designer Viewer installed on your machine. If you are signed in, you will be told whether your system is up-to-date. If there are software updates, these will be listed for you.
The source used for checking for available updates – updates available on the web, or updates available on a local network – and the frequency of checking, is in accordance with settings on the System – Altium Web Update page of the Preferences dialog. Click on the Altium Web Update Preferences option to quickly access this page.
Click on the more... link in the bottom-right corner to quickly access the Altium Web Update page.
The Software Updates pane tells you instantly if your installation of Altium Designer Viewer is up-to-date or not.
If you are not currently signed in to your account, update information will not be available to you. Clicking on the more... link will simply bring up the Account Sign in dialog.
Tasks Pane
This region of the page provides links to the System Configuration page – from where you can access system information and the main Preferences dialog – and the Altium Wiki.
Use links in the Tasks pane to quickly access, for example, the Altium Wiki - the source of the latest and most up-to-date information across all of Altium's design solutions.
When accessing the Altium Wiki, or other web-based content, you can specify that the target page load in your external, default browser, rather than as a page view within the Viewer itself. To do this, ensure that the Open internet links in external Web browser option is enabled, on the System – View page of the Preferences dialog (DXP»Preferences).
Recent Items Pane
This region of the page allows you to quickly access documents, projects, or workspaces, that you have recently opened. Simply double-click on an entry to open the corresponding item. Clicking on a document will open that document as the active document in the main design window.
Click on the more... link in the bottom-right corner to quickly access the Recent Documents, Projects and Workspaces dialog, from where you can open multiple items at the same time.
Open a recent document, project, or workspace in a double-click! Alternatively, access a dialog to perform batch-like opening of multiple items.
Users and Altium Labs Panes
These regions of the page are not relevant to Altium Designer Viewer.
Curious as to what Altium Labs is? This is a 'laboratory' of features of the Altium Designer software that have not been deemed ready for release. They are provided as a 'sneak preview' of what is coming on the horizon to Altium Designer. They can only be 'activated' from within Altium Designer – not Altium Designer Viewer.