1. Project Creation

Introduction

This page includes a quick overview about how to use the PCB Design Software - Altium. You'll learn the basic process on how Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) are made by using the tools in Altium. 

For additional information on learning the Altium basics, please access the tutorial page on their website: Altium Tutorials

Goals

• Learning
  

  • What is Altium and how do you use it?
    

  • How do you create a Project in Altium?

   

• Practical

  • Creating a circuit schematic

  • Developing a board layout and conducting a Design Rule Check

  • Preparing a board design for manufacturing

Note: As you're working through this tutorial, please ask for help in the SCR Discord if you have questions about anything!

Before starting your project, make sure you are added to the Sooner Competitive Robotics Altium Workspace and have an account created.

PCB Basics

A Printed Circuit Board (PCB) is exactly what it sounds like. It's a flat piece of non-conductive material that contains the embedded wiring of a physical circuit. Components, such as IC's, resistors, capacitors, etc., are soldered onto a PCB to connect them all together.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printed_circuit_board

For more information on how PCB works, check out this video: What are PCBs? || How do PCBs Work?

Altium Designer

Altium is the premier industry-level PCB design software. Engineers primarily use Altium because it has a working unified design system, allowing you develop schematics, layouts, component libraries, manufacturing drawings, PCB CAD models, and much more in a single software.

This makes Altium the ideal software for our robotics team. Below are examples of PCBs developed for our robots over the years:

Project Overview - SPI-CAN Breakout Board

For this Altium tutorial, your goal is to recreate the PCB found below, the SPI-CAN Breakout Board.

The SPI-CAN Breakout board provides a CAN (Controller Area Network) adapter to a microcontroller on another PCB. This is important since most microcontrollers communicate in SPI (Serial Peripherals Interface), but need to communicate with the robot and other boards in CAN. Just think of the board as a translater between the two communication protocols, SPI and CAN.

Note: This board is a revision of the the CAN-SPI Breakout Board from the 2026 IGVC Team, designed by Luke Finnegan.

Creating a Project

To start, open the Altium application on your device. Upon Altium loading, you should be greeted by a home page that looks similar to below:

To start a new project, navigate to the top-left toolbar and select File --> select New --> then select Project.

In the new window under Project Name, name your project "Worshop - SPI-CAN".

• Under Folder, make sure your project is saved in a file location you can find. You can change the file location by selecting the three dots "..." on the right.

Upon creating a new project, the Projects Panel will now open, where you can view all your active projects. Your project's repository should be saved on your local device. For future designs, make sure to save it in the Sooner Competitive Robotics workspace.

On the bottom right of your window, you'll find the Panels toggle. This toggle stores a ton of tools and will come in handy later. For now, just know you can reopen the Projects panel through accessing this toggle.

Adding to a Project

Now, your project is currently empty. To get started, you'll need to add documents by right-clicking on the "Workshop - SPI-CAN.PrjPcb" icon. In the new window, hover over Add New to Project, then you can add any documents you need.

Go ahead and add the following documents to your project:

• Schematic
• PCB
• ActiveBOM
• Draftsman Document
  • Assembly Drawing
  • Fabrication Drawing
    
• Output Job File

For the Draftsman Documents, a new window will appear. For the Assembly Drawing, select Assembly Drawing ANSI-B (v. 3), then press OK. For the Fabrication Drawing, select Fabrication Drawing ANSI-B (v. 3), then press OK. 

After you add the required documents to your project, your Projects panel should look like the screenshot below:

Before you start your design, you'll need to save each of your documents and rename them accordingly. To save a document, right-click on the document's icon, then select Save.

Rename each of the documents until they match the names below:

Congratulations! You just finished creating your first Project! Now, you can get started on the schematic by accessing the tutorial: 2. Creating a Schematic