A Guide to Working with Design Projects in CircuitMaker

True to the community-based principles of CircuitMaker, your design projects and those of the other CircuitMaker designers are collectively accessible and stored on the Altium 365 platform.

The Altium 365 platform delivers a robust storage repository for both your designs and their associated configuration, with the benefit of inherent version-controlled capabilities happening behind the scenes. From your perspective, design projects are accessed and managed from within CircuitMaker and through the browser interface of the Altium 365 Personal Space, which is completely free and accessible by you (and only by you) as a registered user of Altium 365.

Signing In to Your Altium Account

First, ensure that you are signed in to your Altium account through CircuitMaker.  To do so, click on the  control at the top-right of the main application window, then click the Sign in entry on the associated menu. Use the subsequent Sign In dialog that appears to enter your Altium account credentials, then click Sign in. Alternatively, sign in using your Google^® or Facebook^® account and, in doing so, link/associate that account with your Altium account. If you don't have an Altium account, you can click the control to register for one.

The control will change to reflect you are having signed in to your Altium account by displaying your Altium profile picture, or avatar (e.g., ). The menu will display this also, with full name and with a link to quickly access your Altium account (profile) through your default web browser.

Ensure you are signed in to your Altium account, using your Altium credentials.

Accessing Your Personal Space

Your Personal Space is a constituent part of the Altium 365 Platform Interface that can be accessed through its direct URL: https://365.altium.com. Sign in to the Altium 365 Platform Interface using your Altium credentials (email and password). Alternatively, sign in using your Google^® or Facebook^® account and, in doing so, link/associate that account with your Altium account. If you don't have an Altium account, you can click the control to register for one.

The list of the projects created by you will be presented on the Files page. Projects that have been shared with you by another user are available from the Shared with Me page.

Presenting a user's Personal Space through the Altium 365 Platform Interface. Here is the Files page where projects created by the user in CircuitMaker are presented. Hover over the image to see the Shared with Me page where the projects shared with the user are presented.

Working with Projects in CircuitMaker

In CircuitMaker, a PCB project is the set of design documents (files) required to specify and manufacture a printed circuit board. The project file (*.PrjPCB) is an ASCII text file that lists which documents are in the project, as well as other project-level settings, such as the required electrical rule checks, project preferences, and project outputs, such as print and CAM settings.

All your PCB projects created in CircuitMaker are stored in your Personal Space of the Altium 365 platform, and there are actually two types of projects in terms of who can see and access them:

• a private (sandbox) project is visible to you only (and specific users you've shared the project with). You can develop a private project until you're ready to share it with the broader CircuitMaker Community by publishing it to circuitmaker.com.
• a public (community) project is visible to CircuitMaker Community users. You remain the owner of a public project, others can open and view it, but cannot edit and save changes to your design until you share the project with them for editing.

Creating a Project

As highlighted in the image below, a new project can be created from within CircuitMaker using the Create Project dialog, accessed using the File » New Project command (1). Define project name and description (2) and click the button (3).

Setting up the Create Project dialog to create a new project from within CircuitMaker.

The new project structure will be created. As highlighted in the image below, the project will be opened in the Projects panel, which will show the project as having No modification (that means that all local project file changes have been saved to the Personal Space), denoted by the green check icon . When new documents are added to the project, they will be shown in the panel as being Scheduled for addition, denoted by blue cross icons (1). Right-click on the project in the Projects panel and choose the Save Project to Server command (2). You will be presented with the Save to Server dialog (3). Select the files you wish to save to your Personal Space and click the OK button (4). Once added, the Projects panel will reflect the fully synchronized state – as indicated by the associated icons (5).

Saving the newly created project to the Personal Space.

Opening a Project

To work on a project in CircuitMaker, it should be opened. As highlighted in the image below, the steps to open your private project or a project that is shared with you are as follows:

1. Open the Open Project dialog, accessed by selecting the File » Open Project command.
2. Select the source location where you would like to open a project from choose the My Personal Space entry, which is distinguished by the icon, or the Shared With Me entry, which is distinguished by the icon.
3. Choose which project to open.
4. Click Open.
5. Once opened, the project will appear in the Projects panel. When a project is opened, the design files are cached locally on your machine.

Example opening of a project.

Opening a Public Project

Alongside creating your own projects, you can also access the projects of other users that they have published to the CircuitMaker Community. Such projects are available on the workspace.circuitmaker.com website from where you can open them in Altium 365's Web Viewer.

To inspect or open a CircuitMaker public project, locate it on the workspace.circuitmaker.com website (for example, you can use the projects search box on the Projects page to search for a specific project by name) and click on the project entry – the page of this project will open. Click the  button next to the Design Files section name to open the project in Altium 365's Web Viewer. This will open on a separate tab of the browser.

Open a Community project in the Web Viewer. Here is shown the project page on the workspace.circuitmaker.com website. Hover the cursor over the image to see the project opened in the Web Viewer.

In the Web Viewer, you can inspect the project's schematic and PCB documents, with full pan and zoom capabilities and the ability to search, cross-probe, select and inspect components and nets throughout the design. If you would like to open the project in CircuitMaker, click the  button at the bottom-left of the viewer. CircuitMaker will open (if not already), with the project and its constituent documents loaded in the Projects panel. The project will be read-only and any edits you make cannot be saved. You can create an independent copy of this project in your own Personal Space by cloning the project.

Cloning a Project

As highlighted in the image below, a project can be cloned using the Clone Project dialog. For the active project, this can be accessed by clicking the Project | Server Actions | Clone button. For the focused project in the Projects panel, right-click on the entry for the project and then choose the Clone command from the context menu. Use the dialog to determine the Project Name and Description (which is not pre-populated), then click OK.

Clone a project from within CircuitMaker.

Sharing a Project

By default, a newly-created project is shared with you only as to the owner of the project, with full (Read/Write) access permissions. For collaboration purposes, a project can be shared with specific people or with the broader CircuitMaker Community.

Sharing with a Specific User

As highlighted in the image below, a project can be shared with others using the Share dialog. For the active project, this can be accessed by clicking the Project | Server Actions | Share button, or the button at the top right of the design space. For the focused project in the Projects panel, right-click on the entry for the project and then choose the Share command from the context menu.

The Share dialog is command central for sharing a design from within CircuitMaker.

From the Share dialog, you can share the actual WIP design itself, through email invitation. Use the available control (highlighted in the image) to determine access rights (Can View by default). View and comment from within CircuitMaker, or the Altium 365 Platform Interface. Editing can only be performed through CircuitMaker.

Sharing with the CircuitMaker Community

When you think that your project is ready to be shared with the broader CircuitMaker Community, you can do this by publishing the project to curcuitmaker.com. This is done from within your Personal Space. As highlighted in the image below, the steps to do so are as follows:

1. Open the Personal Space browser interface using the direct URL: https://365.altium.com (sign in if not already) and open the Files page.
2. Find the tile of the project you would like to publish and click the  button at the bottom-right corner of the tile.
3. Choose the Publish to circuitmaker.com command from the associated menu.
4. Confirm publishing in the window that appears by clicking the  button.

Example of sharing a CirciutMaker project to the CircuitMaker Community.

The project will be published, and the Edit Project page of the workspace.circuitmaker.com website will open in a new tab of your browser where you can add some additional information related to your project. Make any changes needed and click the  button.

Add any additional information needed for the published project from the Edit Project page.

The projects that you have published will be listed under the Shared Projects tab of the workspace.circuitmaker.com website's Home or Projects page.

The projects published by you can be found under the Shared Projects tab.

If for some reason, you would like to remove your project from the list of published projects and make it unavailable for the CircuitMaker Community, you can do this from the page of this project. To open it, click on the project tile in the list of shared projects. Click the  button at the top of the page. In the window that opens, type the project name in the text box and click  to confirm the deletion. As stated in the confirmation window, the project will be deleted only from cuircuitmaker.com, i.e. other CircuitMaker Community users will not be able to access it. However, the project will still be available for you from CircuitMaker and your Personal Space.

Deleting a project – effectively, 'unpublishing' it for the CircuitMaker Community.