Re: Multi person work on one PCB - Altium DXP 2004

On 30 May, 06:10, "Brad Velander" <bvel...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Joel,
Since you always seem so interested in various CAD system comments. On
the issues you are discussing, Protel P99SE/Altium AD does this fairly well.
It will allow multiple users to open single files, notifying each that there
are others with the same file open. Should one of the parties revise and
save the file, the program notifies everyone of the change. It then suggests
that they may want to update their files to reflect the recently saved
changes.

This does not allow for multiple users to work on the same design file
though. There are manners by which multiple Protel/Altium designers can work
on the files but it is the same for each and every CAD package. Manually
divide and conquer, then paste the various finished blocks back together. It
is workable but requires tremendous caution, great communication and
excellent cooperation.
--
Sincerely,
Brad Velander.

"Joel Kolstad" <JKolstad71HatesS...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

news:135p31eegqh54c6@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"Marra" <cresswellave...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1180136769.730295.314750@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Its not possible for 2 applications to alter the same file and send it
back to disc.
You would end up with the last write overwriting the first one.

Sure, but this isn't necessarily a bad thing. I was just pointing out
that operating systems have provisions for all sort of fancy file-locking
semantics, and it's up to the application software to make use of these in
a meaningful manner.

Most applications have a very simple view of files.
You read it, modify it, the write it back.

Agreed, many applications do take this approach.

Microsoft are one of the few companies that keeps looking at files to
see if they have been updated since it was loaded.
Its a big overhead in software and most programmers dont do it.

Just "listening" for file modification events is actually not particularly
difficult at all... at least if you've already built yourself some
GUI-based program that has to listen for various system events anyway.
Then putting up a "Ignore or reload?" dialog and firing off a re-load
events is probably no more than 25-50 lines of code total.

---Joel

But this doesnt work !
What if 2 people at the same time modify a file?
Which one should the system take as being the right one
Point proved !



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