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Great! After reading and following the document mentioned, you should now have all our projects downloaded locally, and you should also know how to create a new branch for a new project (if you don't know how Git works, take some time to learn about how it works). Since we're starting a new project, go ahead and create a new branch called 'hw_tutorial_[your_name]'. This will be the branch where you will do your development for this tutorial.
Creating the Project:
Now we're ready to start a new Altium project, and begin our schematic layout. However, since setting up a brand new project can require a lot of overhead work that is repetitive, we've gone ahead and created a template for any new 'Carrier Board' that we need to make. And if you remember from earlier, this tutorial requires you to make a carrier board, since our controller board will be attached to it.
To begin, make a new folder inside the '../hardware' directory called 'MSXII_HW_Tutorial_[your_name]',
then go into 'MSXII_Templates\MSXII_CarrierBoardTemplate' folder and copy all files from that folder into the folder you just created. This essentially creates a Carrier Board project for you, instead of having to go through a bunch of settings and parameters. Now go ahead and open the Altium project file that you just copied into your new folder.
Creating the Schematic:
Welcome to Altium Designer! If there are no issues, you should see a project panel on the left hand side, go ahead and double click 'Controller_Board_Interface.SchDoc'
This will open the schematic diagram of your PCB. The schematic diagram is essentially like a block diagram that contains 'schematic symbols' for all the parts that go onto the board; it also includes all connections that need to be made between parts (wire connections).
What you see here is a schematic symbol (yellow rectangle) for the connector that your board requires in order to plug in the controller board. This is important, and we need it! If you notice, it has assigned pins. These pins correspond to the actual pin assignments of the MCU that we're using on our Controller board. Essentially, if you want to connect something on your board to the MCU, you connect it to its respective pin on the connector - It's an indirect connection, since the MCU isn't physically on our Carrier board.
The Mezzanine_Interface on the right of the connector isn't needed for now, so go ahead and drag over it to remove (del) it along with its connections.
Now you're ready to begin layout out the schematic for your board. One thing that's great about our work-flow is that we have a shared library that contains all the electrical parts that we've ever used in our past projects! Everything from resistors and capacitors, to buttons and switches, to LEDs and Integrated Circuits (chips or ICs). Part of this tutorial will teach you how to add a new part to our library, but for now, I'll show you how to use it to add parts to your schematic!
In order to place a new part in your schematic, go ahead and press 'Place → Part' or simply press 'pp' on your keyboard. The following panel will appear:
make sure the drop-down menu has "Schematic Diagrams.SchLib" selected. This is because we're in the schematic layout (each part has a schematic symbol, for the schematic, and a physical footprint that's used for the PCB layout). This list will have all our parts (I recommend you sort the list by Designator ID). Let's start with our buttons, go ahead and find the following part(s): "SW SPST-NO 0.1A 32V D6 ...". You'll see that there's a few of them. They're just different colours. Pick the one you want, and drag the symbol onto your schematic sheet. This will place it on your schematic:
And that's how you place a part! Super easy! Now go ahead and choose a different colour button for your second one, and place it on. (It's important that your schematic is aesthetically clear. So place things nicely, and feel free to move things around). Now to make connections, you can select 'Place → Wire" or ctrl+w, then press to begin laying a wire. Altium will show you if a new connection is being made by showing a thin large red 'X' over your cursor when you hover over a possible connection. Go ahead and place wires before and after the buttons:
