How to Compare PCB Design Schematics in Altium 365

| Created: August 12, 2022 | Updated: February 5, 2025

A design project doesn’t appear out of nowhere. The design process spreads over time, and project documents change. Schematic documents gradually become more complex, new functional blocks appear, and already finished parts can be modified and updated.

The need for compare

When the project is released and a series of boards is manufactured, adjustments will probably be made and a new release will be performed.

It is always useful to be able to track the evolution of a project. The Altium 365 platform allows not only to store all the intermediate versions of documents, but also has a powerful built-in tool for comparing documents, particularly schematics.

Project history

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You can access project history directly in Altium Designer (from the Projects panel) or in the Altium 365 Workspace browser interface.

The project history is represented as an axis going from the bottom to the top that starts when the project was created and ends at its current state. The axis contains commits with a brief description of the changes made.

How to launch comparison

Select the “Compare Schematic to” command and a commit you want to compare it to. It can be a previous commit, or any other commit.

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After selecting an option, a web page with comparison results being loaded will open. You can either wait for the operation to complete or simply close the window. The results will not be lost - you will receive an email that will contain a link to the comparison result page. The process of generating results may take some time!

In case you decide not to wait for the result right now, you will receive an email with a link:

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Comparison window overview

The comparison page consists of two main regions: the Differences panel where all changes are grouped and listed, and the main viewing area with graphical representation.

Changed component example

Let’s take a closer look at the description of one of the differences - component replacement

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Changed net example

Example with changes in one net:

Detailed description:

green “+” - pin is connected to the net
red “-” - pin is excluded from the net

Pin designations are clickable links!

Visualization of changes

The green objects were added, the yellow ones were edited, and the red ones were deleted.

In addition to the detailed text description in the Differences panel, the visualization of these changes is also very interesting.

Crossprobing

When you click on an object in the graphical field, it activates the corresponding line in the Differences panel.

Text search

There is another interesting feature. It is possible to perform a text search for the content of modifications in the Differences panel.

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About Author

Zachariah Peterson has an extensive technical background in academia and industry. He currently provides research, design, and marketing services to companies in the electronics industry. Prior to working in the PCB industry, he taught at Portland State University and conducted research on random laser theory, materials, and stability. His background in scientific research spans topics in nanoparticle lasers, electronic and optoelectronic semiconductor devices, environmental sensors, and stochastics. His work has been published in over a dozen peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings, and he has written 2500+ technical articles on PCB design for a number of companies. He is a member of IEEE Photonics Society, IEEE Electronics Packaging Society, American Physical Society, and the Printed Circuit Engineering Association (PCEA). He previously served as a voting member on the INCITS Quantum Computing Technical Advisory Committee working on technical standards for quantum electronics, and he currently serves on the IEEE P3186 Working Group focused on Port Interface Representing Photonic Signals Using SPICE-class Circuit Simulators.