Getting Started

From Aligni Wiki

Congratulations on your new Aligni account! We think you'll be happy, more efficient, and more productive with Aligni.

When you first start using a fresh Aligni account, the emptiness may be a little daunting. Don't worry -- it won't take long for you to add data. You may want to look around our online demo database while you read through this guide.

Organization

Aside from parts, the organizational entities that you should be aware of are listed below. Knowing how Aligni relates these entities to your parts is a good motivator for how you should organize your database.

It is important to recognize that Aligni is a database-backed application. A properly-organized database requires that everything (parts, manufacturers, items on a PO, etc.) be an entity in the database. This is an important distinction from a simple spreadsheet that you may be using to organize your parts currently. It is also what gives applications like Aligni so much capability and structure.

• Part Types - Typically, these are terms like "Capacitor", "Resistor", "IC", and so on. Aligni uses these terms to help you narrow searches and for nothing else. You can use whatever terms you want, but you will want to make some decision on how granular you want to make these terms. For example, do you want just one category for "Capacitor" or do you want multiple ones like "Ceramic Capacitor" and "Tantalum Capacitor."

• Manufacturers - Aligni requires that a manufacturer be associated with every part in the database. The decision to use "Generic" manufacturers is entirely up to you (See Generics and Part Alternates for more discussion on this). You will probably want to add yourself as a manufacturer because any parts that you build will be associated with your company.

• Vendors - Parts are built by manufacturers and sold by vendors. In many cases, a manufacturer is also a vendor. Vendors are associated with quotes, purchase orders, and vendor part numbers. Parts are related to vendors through manufacturers. Manufacturers are related to vendors through the vendors "line card."

• Units - Units help to draw a line between what is purchased and what is used. Most of your database will probably just use "each" as the unit, but some parts (such as wire) need other units to make sense of their usage. You can read more about units in our separate units topic.

First Steps

Your first steps will involve adding some of the organizational entities above. If you already have an approved vendor list, you can start by adding those Vendors and the Manufacturers that they represent. You can ignore the details such as address and phone numbers for now -- you will be able to add those details later.

Next, once you have decided on your basic Part Types, you can add them.

Next, you may need Units for some parts so you can add units and appropriate unit conversions. Note: Because of the dependencies created with units, you will not be able to change the Unit associated with each part after its creation. Most parts are simply used as "each", so this is generally not a problem.

Finally, you can start creating your parts. You can add additional data such as quotes, vendor part numbers, and alternates. The more complete your database is with this additional data, the more efficient you will be.