Opening a Project in Altium Designer

Parent page: Working with Projects

To work on a managed project, you effectively check it out as a local working copy. This is performed directly from within Altium Designer using the File » Open Project command. What happens next depends on whether you are a member of the Workspace team or have been shared a project outside of the Workspace team.

• Workspace Team Member – the Open Project dialog will open in which you can choose which managed project to open from your connected Workspace (when connected to a Workspace, that Workspace will appear in the Locations region of the dialog, distinguished by the icon, and appear with the name given to the Workspace). Only those managed projects that have been shared with you (you have permission to access them) will be listed.

• Once opened, the project will appear under an entry for the Workspace, in the Projects panel.
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• Choose which managed project to open from your connected Workspace within Altium Designer from those currently shared with you.
• You have the option to open the project to the default checkout path or use the drop-down menu to specify a custom path. The default checkout path is defined as a property of the design repository in which the project resides. For a Git repository (e.g. the Versioned Storage repository that is native to the Workspace), this is the Local Path field found in the Git Repository dialog. For an SVN repository, this is the Default Checkout Path field found in the SVN Design Repository dialog. Access the properties dialog by selecting the entry for the repository on the Data Management – Design Repositories page of the Preferences dialog then clicking the button.
• Choose the Open Project As Copy option to create a cloned version of the project under a different name.
• When browsing the project through Altium Designer's Explorer panel, click the button at the top-right of the panel, to open the project in Altium Designer (adding it to the Projects panel).

• Invited Stakeholder Outside of the Workspace Team – the Open Project dialog will open in which you can access any managed project that has been shared with you from the Shared With Me location.

• Once opened, the project will appear under the entry Shared with me, in the Projects panel. What you can do with the project depends on the access rights you have been given to it. If editing rights were assigned to you, you will be able to edit the design normally, which would typically be the case for an external contractor. If you have viewing rights only, you will be able to comment on the WIP design.
• The projects that are available under Shared With Me are those that have been shared with your sign-in name (your AltiumLive account) from an Altium 365 Workspace. Note that Altium Designer does not need to be connected to a Workspace to access shared projects.
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• Choose which managed project to open, from within Altium Designer, from those currently shared with you as an external stakeholder. Note that access is made to such projects without having access to the Workspace.

You have the option to open the project to the default checkout path or use the drop-down menu to specify a custom path. The default checkout path is taken from the Document Path field on the System – Default Locations page of the Preferences dialog.