An introductory guide to Altium Designer! This will cover the high level steps of working in Altium along with in context links for more depth where needed. Topics include basic navigation & controls, the project workflow, the component workflow, and more.
CONTENTS
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Project Workflow
Altium Designer delivers great results for PCB development but has many steps to achieve this, not only in software, but also within NER to coordinate between our members.
Read more below:
Navigating Altium
On Startup
On startup Altium usually will open the “Home” page. It has some links to trainings, articles, and surveys, none of which are particularly useful. Feel free to close it out by right clicking on the tab and clicking “Close”
To actually view documents and edit projects you’ll need a license and access to the vault/Altium 365! This requires logging into the client, starting with clicking “Not Signed In” in the top right.
You can then enter your username and password which should have been setup when requesting a NER account (https://nerdocs.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/NER/pages/3932597/Altium+Designer#Get-Access).
Once logged into 365, you should have access to the vault and license manager. Sometimes your license will also activate, but you can double check by opening the licensing page. This is also found in the top right, by clicking on your profile and then selecting “Licenses…”
See below for more information regarding activating a license.
Managing your License
See explanations for the markers in the above image:
“Use License”: Click to take one of our licenses
“Roam”: Takes a license for a certain amount of time, for use offline (you shouldn’t have to use this)
“Seats” Dropdown: See who has licenses (and bother them in #pcb to give you one)
Pay attention to the #pcb channel in Slack when working on boards. Sometimes the licenses get taken up accidentally when people are not actively working and we run out of licenses.
Accessing Projects
Projects Panel
Opening projects is primarily completed through the projects panel. Location of the projects tab can be moved wherever is preferred (just click and drag) but it defaults to the left side panel column. Below are two examples of locations it may be:
Once open, all NER projects can be accessed from the 365 vault. Right click the “Northeastern Electric Racing” cloud section, and select “Open Project”:
The projects panel has two view modes, list and folder. This can be toggled with the button in the top right of the above screenshot.
From this window, you can easily find, select, and open any NER project!
Explorer Panel
Alternative method for opening projects
All projects for NER are stored in the online vault, which can be accessed by right clicking the top of the panel and selecting “Explorer”:
The panel that opens can then be used to select a project and open it:
Accessing Files
Opening Files
Once a project is open there are many dropdowns and folders of the project contents. The most important folder will be “Source Documents”, which contains the actual schematics, layouts, and BOMs of the project.
Opening any file in a project is as simple as double clicking it!
Click below for more depth on files:
File Statuses
All files within the Altium 365 vault will have a series of symbols in the projects pane indicating their status. The below screenshots summarize their meanings:
The full page with further info is https://www.altium.com/documentation/altium-designer/managing-project-documents#!indicating-document-status, particularly the “Indicating Document Status” section.
Managing Open Files
Very quickly in Altium you’ll find yourself with many files open at once. It is important to be aware that Altium uses a stacked tab system once you have exceeded how many tabs can fit within your working window.
{screenshot of a screen with many file types open, showing stacked tabs}
When stacked like this, files can be accessed by clicking the stack of the right file type, and then selecting the file name.
{screenshot of navigating a tab stack}
No matter how many files are open, the projects tab can still be used to pull up files, even if they are already open. Just double click the file you are looking for.
Closing Files
Just right click on the file name and select “Close”. This can be done from the projects panel or the file tabs.
{2 screenshots side-by-side showing the right click dropdown in projects and in the main work window}
There are many, many options for closing multiple files such as closing all others, closing all of the same filetype, and more. Feel free to explore as you work on projects
Schematic View
Every filetype has a set of menus & tools available to it. Always be aware that menus may change in Altium depending on what file you have selected!
Simple navigation within schematics is done by right clicking and dragging. This will pan the schematic. Zooming is achieved by holding Ctrl, right clicking, and dragging or by holding middle click and dragging. Depending on the computer, touchscreens and trackpads may or may not work intuitively (pinch to zoom, 2 finger drag to pan).
Checkout https://www.altium.com/documentation/altium-designer/navigating-document for official documentation on navigation
Checkout the Schematic Capture page for how to work on schematics
Checkout the Altium Reference, Tips, Troubleshooting page for schematic view shortcuts
Layout View
Layouts have three fundamental views:
Planning view
Layout view
3D view
These can be accessed by just pressing the keyboard key with the corresponding number (1, 2, or 3).
Planning view is rarely used for our purposes, so you can disregard it for now.
Simple navigation within 2D layouts is the same as schematics. Panning and zooming are the same as above. In addition, the whole board can be “flipped” by hitting Ctrl + F.
Within 3D view, the shift key is used to access view rotations. When holding shift and right clicking on certain parts of the control sphere you will be able to rotate and tilt the view. Simple panning and zooming are again, the same as schematics and 2D view. Hitting Ctrl + F will flip the board about the cursor.
{screenshot of navigation ball}
Checkout the Schematic Capture page for how to work on schematics
Checkout the Altium Reference, Tips, Troubleshooting page for schematic view shortcuts
Object Selection
Similar to most CAD software, Altium provides includes and exclusive selection depending on selection direction. Selecting from the left and moving right will select all touching the region, whereas right to left will select only objects fully within the region.
{2 images of a handful of components being selected, one showing each direction. Probably an arrow over top to highlight the motion used}
Further selection control can be accessed via selection filters
Selection Filters
At the top of both schematic and layout views, there is a toolbar typically starting with the selection filter button.
{image of filter button}
In this menu the user can select what types of objects they are interested in selecting. Once toggled, the same dragging selection can be used, but only matching object types will be selected.
{example image of selecting many objects and only certain objects being selected}
More tips are highlighted in the Altium Reference, Tips, Troubleshooting page. Additionally, official documentation on selection is provided by https://www.altium.com/documentation/altium-designer/design-object-selection.
Object Properties & Parameters
Almost everything in Altium has properties and parameters. What you can do with these will be discussed throughout these Confluence pages, but below will explain how to open the properties panel.
By default, the Properties panel will be hidden and needs to be opened. This is done via the panels button in the bottom right of the window. It can also be accessed from the toolbar “View” dropdown.
{2 images for these methods}
Once open, the panel can be accessed by clicking on its tab (wherever you decide to place it), or the panel can be “pinned” open, using the pin button at the top of the window. Pinning prevents the panel from minimizing itself.
{image of pinned panel}
If the properties panel is open, an object properties can be viewed simply by clicking on something. Anything that is selected (even the files themselves) will have properties that will show in the panel.
When working in schematics or layouts, if you have the panel closed, any component properties can be opened by double clicking the component. This will automatically expand the panel and show the properties of the selected component.
Multiple objects can also be highlighted at once, with varying results depending on what was selected. Only common fields will be shown, and those will differing values will be displayed with an * rather than an exact value.
Using selection filters (https://nerdocs.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/NER/pages/153026566/Intro+to+Altium#Selection-Filters) or queries (Altium Query Language) is the best way to select multiple objects and successfully edit properties of all of them at once
Component Workflow
To ensure consistency in our components, a lot of effort goes into keeping them organized. A large part of this is using Altium’s ple built in state flows to indicate status of components. Below is an example of where you see these states:
These states can be seen throughout Altium in BOMs as well as in component properties, the component panel, and more.
The following diagram shows our state flow and what each state implies
Read more below:
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