Enhanced Devices View

The functionality of the Devices view (View » Devices View) has been greatly enhanced for Altium Designer Winter 09. You can now control exactly what you see, and how you see it.

When developing your embedded intelligence, any combination of hardware connected to your PC could exist. For example:

• A single NanoBoard

• Two or more daisy-chained NanoBoards

• A NanoBoard and a third party development board

• One or more NanoBoards and a custom board.

The Devices view is no longer constrained to showing only hardware that is connected to the PC over a single port (USB or Parallel). It can now be configured to display the hardware that is connected to the PC over multiple ports. What's more, multiple ports can be displayed in the same view or, should you prefer, multiple views.

Figure 1 illustrates multiple hardware development platforms – two Desktop NanoBoard NB2DSK01s and a NanoBoard-NB1 – connected to a PC using multiple ports, all displayed within a single Devices view.

Figure 1. Display the hardware development platforms connected to the PC using multiple ports, all from within the same Devices view.

Controlling the View

Access to a Devices view is made from either the View » Devices Views sub-menu, or by using the button. Figure 2 shows the available commands when using the button.

Figure 2. Commands for controlling what is viewed.

To have all hardware – irrespective of port connection – displayed in the same Devices view, choose the All available ports command.

To open an additional view of only hardware that is connected over a parallel port connection, choose the Parallel-Port command.

Once initial connected hardware has been identified, you will also be able to open it in its own view. To do this, simply click on the corresponding entry in the drop-down.