The product's elements
Equipment, boards, PCBs and stackups. Each with its own numbering.
Hardware revision control
The new revision does not erase the previous one
Hardware piles up revisions over years, and the expensive part is almost never making the next one: it is working out how it differed from the previous one when nobody who was there is left.
In XKEMA each version records which one came before it. The chain is a fact in the system, not something inferred from a file date or from the suffix somebody added to the name.
- V2.1 Frozen approved with two signatures · 14/02/2025
- V2.0 Frozen connector J1 changed · 03/10/2024
- V1.0 Frozen first batch · 21/05/2024
Sample data.
What has revisions, exactly
Not just the documents. In XKEMA the engineering data has its own versions too, and that is usually where the change that matters is.
The engineering tables
Bills of materials, power tables, requirement tables and interface documents.
The documentation
PDF, Gerber, drill files, IBIS and SPICE models, library footprints and symbols.
And what does not
Your design tool's native project. XKEMA controls what comes out of it, not its internal database.
Comparing two revisions
What changed between V2.0 and V2.1
XKEMA puts the two versions side by side and marks every row: unchanged, added, removed or modified. The state is said in a word as well as in a colour, so it can be read without having to tell two shades apart.
| Ref | MPN | Qty | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| U1 | STM32F407VGT6 | 1 | Unchanged |
| U4 | TPS62130RGTR | 2 | Unchanged |
| J1 | 1-2112931-1 | 1 | Modified |
| C19 | GRM188R71H104KA93D | 1 | Added |
| R7 | RC0603FR-0710KL | 1 | Removed |
Sample data. The four states —unchanged, added, removed, modified— are the ones XKEMA uses.
On the document too
Two revisions of a PDF are compared page against page, without leaving the browser and without opening two viewers on two screens to look from one to the other.
And on the geometry
Two revisions of the manufacturing package are compared by their geometry: which layer changed and where. That is the difference between knowing the Gerber is different and seeing how.
Closing a revision
An approved revision stays put
When a version is approved, it is frozen. It does not reopen and “one little detail” does not get corrected: what comes next is a new version, linked to it. That is the only way the sentence “this is the one that was manufactured” is still true five years later.
- Who approved it and when.
- How many signatures were required and why those.
- A fingerprint of the approved state, verifiable afterwards.
This is not Git
There are no branches, no merges and no conflict resolution. Two people do not work on the same frozen version to join up afterwards whatever came out.
The model is the one hardware already uses: one line of versions, an explicit approval, and a frozen point you start the next one from.
What you won't find here
XKEMA does not open your ECAD's native project and does not compare its internal files, does not create branches or merge two people's work, and does not warn you on its own that a component in an old revision has gone obsolete.