Configuring and Managing the Environment

The Altium Designer environment is configured and manged through a dedicated menu/panel, that is available regardless of the editor currently being used. The items available here are referred to as System Resources. Access to system resources has been given a makeover, with the arrival of a new pop-out style panel that replaces the DXP menu in releases of old. This panel is accessed by clicking on the button, in the top-left corner of the application window.

The panel contains the following resource entries:

• My Account – gives access to the My Account view, from where you can manage access to your account and license usage.

• Preferences – gives access to the Preferences dialog.

• Connected Devices – gives access to the Devices view.

• Plugins and Updates – gives access to the Plugins view, from where you can manage your installation of Altium Designer in terms of its features and functionality, through the installation of optional plugins. These plugins are provided through Altium's cloud-based installation repository. It is from this view that you can update to the latest revision of the Altium Designer platform, or revert to an older one.

• Downloads – opens the Altium Download Manager, from where you can see what is currently being downloaded from the remote installation repository.

• Vault Explorer – gives access to the Vaults panel. This is command central for working with connected Altium Vaults.

• Publishing Destinations – gives access to the Data Management – Publishing Destinations page of the Preferences dialog. Here you can add and manage destinations to publish generated release data from a board design, directly from a connected Enterprise Vault.

• Design Repositories (VCS) – gives access to the Data Management – Design Repositories page of the Preferences dialog. From here, you can create and connect to version-controlled Design Repositories that utilize Subversion or CVS as the version control provider. By connecting to a repository you are, in effect, registering that repository with the system, telling Altium Designer of its existence as it were

• Design Releases – gives access to the PCB Release view. This is the graphical interface to Altium Designer's PCB Process Manager, used to perform the high-integrity board design release process.

• Altium Forums – gives access to the Altium Community Forums.

• Altium Wiki – gives access to the Altium Wiki.

• Customize – gives access to the customization dialog for the particular editor associated with the currently active document.

• Run Process – gives access to the Run Process dialog, from where you can manually run a supported process, including any parametric information.

• Run Script – gives access to the Select Item To Run dialog, from where you can browse to and select a script (in one of the various flavors of supported scripting languages) to run in Altium Designer.

At the bottom of the panel is a search field. Enter text or partial text here and the system will dynamically search for corresponding entries across:

• Menu commands available in the editor associated with the currently active document

• Entries on Altium Designer's navigation pages (including links to information on topics in the Wiki, and links to videos)

• Panels associated with the current editor

• Recent documents

• Help

The results will be displayed in the panel.