PCB Design Blogs

Who hasn't scrolled through their phone's camera roll in vain looking for that one particular photo - the one where your baby looks adorable? Or the one of the raindrop nestling like a pearl in a leaf? Or of the fabulous cafe you went to in the mountains? Then you hit your forehead and say sheesh, the photo is on the external hard disk. Oh, wait, I think it's in the Cloud. Huh. Which Cloud account did I back up the photo to? No, wait, I saved it to X folder on the PC. Nope, not there. Oh, I know! It's in Y folder. It isn't? Where is it?!?

So, one New Year's Day, you took a resolution (and what's more, you stuck to it) and ORGANIZED all your photos in one location – by date, location, category, whatever. And now, there you are, at your ease, lounging in your chair, gazing at the exact photo you want. No more scrambling through multiple locations.

That's just what you get in the 17.4-2019 release of Allegro EDM (Engineering Data Management). You can now browse and search through all the required logs (e.g., System Capture logs) from the comfort of your web browser, instead of trawling through multiple machines digging for files on disk.

How do I do that in the 17.4-2019 version of Allegro EDM, you ask? Easy enough. See that little Pulse icon in your system tray? Yup. That's the one.
 

That little icon shows up whenever you launch System Capture. It isn't quite the gateway to Narnia, but it is the 'gateway' to the Pulse platform and a browser page – Pulse Manager.

What's the Pulse platform?
Simply put, it's an ECAD data platform that provides services such as library management, component search from external vendors, embedded data management, enterprise PLM integration, and much, much more.

And, what's Pulse Manager?
Pulse Manager, accessed through a browser, is a modern, easy to use webpage for tasks such as logging, backing up and restoring, disk management, and so on. So, let's get to the logs. One of the core services on the Pulse platform is centralized logging. The logs are now aggregated and indexed in the Pulse Data Mart, which makes them searchable. We've added some extra fields to the logs this time around, which will help you (and let's be honest, help us too) to identify and resolve issues more quickly.

How do I access the logs?
Click the View Logs icon in the Logging tile in Pulse Manager.
 

Logs are broken up by internal service names, such as bifrost. If you want a list of these names, the Allegro EDM Configuration Guide has a lookup table.

 
What's Home?

"There's no place like home", said Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz and she's right. Here's what's in Pulse Home - <userprofile>/Pulse:

• Component search index
• Central logging index
• Version control repository
• All application logs (including System Capture’s logs)

This location is a working space for Pulse. Best not to manually modify it! But...Oh, you want to specify a different location with more storage space? Sure. That you can. Go ahead.

Just remember - historical versions of designs will not automatically move when the Pulse Home is changed. For now, manually copy the Pulse/atom folder to the new Pulse home location to preserve the historical versions. This will become easier in future releases.

I'm an engineer. Do I need to look at Pulse Manager?
Usually, no. System Capture by default runs in the “individual” mode (System Capture isn't connected to a central Pulse server). Your machine is itself a server, which runs embedded services that System Capture needs. So, just leave the Pulse Manager icon alone. Like the OneDrive icon, the Pulse Manager icon will sit there quietly doing its own thing.

What's remote URL?

Remote URL is how we tell the Pulse tray to connect to a central Pulse server. When the remote URL is blank, the Pulse tray runs in individual mode and provides you with basic functionality. But when you set the remote URL to a Pulse server, here's what you get:

• Access to the corporate library
• Centralized logs, now that they are collected on the server
• Design versions are pushed to the server

And, you can start to explore the world of Cloud-connected ECAD design. The world is your oyster!

Conclusion
"What's in a name"? mused I when I first learned that we're moving from Allegro EDM to Pulse in 17.4. As you can see, Pulse by any other name wouldn't smell as sweet. If you're a sysadmin, life has become much easier in 17.4-2019. If you're an engineer, you can continue to focus on your core tasks of designing and let the Pulse tray do its thing.