Update from Template Support when using Vault-based Schematic Templates

Support has long been available for schematic templates to be created and released to a target Altium Vault, for reuse in future board-level design projects. A released Schematic Template Item can be reused manually, or as part of centralized enforcement of a designer's working environment. The latter sees the template used as a configuration data item in one or more defined Environment Configurations. In terms of manual reuse, while a vault-based template could be hooked-up for use easily enough, there was no way to tell if the revision being used was out of date, and no way to quickly update to using the latest revision. Until now. With the arrival of Altium Designer 15.0, the manual reuse of vault-based schematic templates has been enhanced to address these very issues.

As before, command-central for hooking-up a managed template is the Template tab of the Document Options dialog. However, a key change here is that the use of either a standard file-based template, or a managed vault-based template, is treated and configured separately, in accordance with the state of the new Use Vault Template option:

• Option disabled - choose, and use, a standard file-based template.
• Option enabled - choose, and use, a vault-based template.

The Use Vault Template option controls whether a file-based template, or a vault-based template, is used.

The Revision State field now reflects whether the revision of the template currently being used is the latest (Up to date) or has since been superseded (Out of date). If the latter, simply click the Update From Latest Revision button. The later revision will be used - as reflected in the Item Revision field, and the Revision State changing to Up to date once again - and applied to the active schematic sheet.

You can now see if the revision of the vault template you're using is out of date, and can quickly update to the latest revision at the click of a button.