Exporting Altium project files

[snarkysparky]

I  have a contractor doing board layout.  He has completed the design and provided me with the pcbdoc file to check over.

I also want the schematic file to check.  He says Altium won't let him save the schematic file for sending to me.

Clearly from my point of view all the design files created for this project belong to my company and we must have them after his contract is up.

I don't know enough about Altium to understand the issue.  Is there something that prevents saving a local copy of all the design files so we can have them for reference.

Thanks

[nctnico]

That sounds strange. If you put all the files from a project in a ZIP then you have the entire project (schematics + PCB). However, you won't have the component database but AFAIK it is possible to have Altium create a project specific component database. So all in all you should be able to get the entire project (schematics, PCB and component information) from the contractor.

Whether or not you actually own the design from a copyright POV depends on what you have agreed upon with your contractor. If the contractor has made a design based on your specifications without you interfering with the schematics and PCB layout, then the contractor owns the copyright. In that case the contractor will need to transfer the copyright explicitely to you. If you did not put any agreement into place where it comes to copyrights / transfer of files, then it is very likely the contractor is the legitimate owner of the copyright and is not obliged to transfer any design files to you. Copyright is tricky; consult a lawyer!

[ajb]

If you're asking for the SchDoc file, then there's no 'exporting' required.  They just send you the file (or files) they've been working on.  I guess they could be using Altium's new cloud thing and then maybe there's some sort of issue there, but I don't see why that would be a problem.

Maybe they mean there's something preventing them from using the project packager?  Even so it should be possible for them to send you the project files as they are, unless they're using local symbol sheets or something which might get messy.  But at the very least they should be able to send you PDFs! 

Hopefully there's a clause in your contract specifying that the final product includes all design files, but if not this would be a great time to make sure it's in all of your future contracts.

Whether or not you actually own the design from a copyright POV depends on what you have agreed upon with your contractor. If the contractor has made a design based on your specifications without you interfering with the schematics and PCB layout, then the contractor own the copyright. So the contractor will need to transfer the copyright explicitely to you. If you did not put any agreement into place where it comes to copyrights / transfer of files, then it is very likely the contractor is the legitimate owner of the copyright and is not obliged to transfer any design files to you. Copyright is tricky; consult a lawyer!

 

I don't know about other countries, but in the US the key phrase is 'work for hire'.  You would want to be very explicit about ownership of the final design materials.  Situations that may involve a contractor re-using design work they've already done make this a bit more complicated; it can be mutually beneficial to allow a contractor to incorporate tried-and-tested engineering from their previous work in a work for hire, but you'd have to allow for that in the agreement. 

[nctnico]

Yep. And that is why you either need to really know what you are doing or consult a lawyer. I do a lot of contracting and the largest section in my terms & conditions is about copyright & licensing.

[PlainName]

He has completed the design and provided me with the pcbdoc file to check over

How do you view that pcbdoc? If it's with Altium (or its viewer) then the schdoc is exactlyt the same - he sends you the file he's working on. If it's not Altium or a viewer then you probably don't have the original pcbdoc but something like the gerbers. In that case, exporting the schematic as pdf is a button away, a few minutes extra to have everything done automatically instead.

Hmmm. Since you need the schematic to check over, that suggests you don't actually know what he's done at the moment. That is, you've told him you want a PCB to do X and he's made one, but you don't know the detail of it. If so, it sounds like he wants to keep it that way so you're dependent on him for future changes, etc. That might be in your game plan and costed accordingly, but if it's not then perhaps you should review your contract with him pretty sharpish.

[T3sl4co1l]

I suppose there's an outside chance that they did it entirely in PCB, and the SCH doesn't exist at all (and perhaps they're embarrassed to that end?).

Like, I did some updates to a board recently, in the same vein (it was imported from other software, and the schematics didn't transfer).  Even just doing netlist updates is such a PITA in Altium, I'd hate to have to do a whole board from scratch... but who knows.  There are almost always at least three ways of doing something in Altium, and people can develop (and stick with) weird workflows...

If nothing else, you can extract the netlist.  It's a rather dry (hard to read) format, alas, and not very rich either (i.e. no pin names (depending on flavor of netlist), descriptive symbols, sense of signal flow, etc.).

Assuming the PCB uses nets at all... shudder?

Tim

[snarkysparky]

Thanks all for good ideas.

Details.

We provided an initial schematic done by an employee who left the company.  However I have made many "back of the napkin"  changes and i would like to verify the schematic is correct in our copy of Altium.  I can look at things in the software but not really qualified to do  a production level board design of this complexity ( if i had the files ).
He provides pdf files of the schematic but that is troublesome to verify due to it just being images of the schematic.  I would like to verify the schematic in Altium.

I suspect a little bit of hold the goods behavior is going on.   I am going to have to press the issue but I wanted to know first if there might really be a reason he cannot provide the native files.

I will advise my boss to notify him that the complete file set is a deliverable under our current agreement.

Thanks