Altium NEXUS Documentation

Tutorial - A Complete Design Walkthrough with Altium NEXUS

Created: January 10, 2022 | Updated: September 2, 2022
Applies to altium-nexus version: 5
This documentation page references Altium NEXUS/NEXUS Client (part of the deployed NEXUS solution), which has been discontinued. All your PCB design, data management and collaboration needs can now be delivered by Altium Designer (with Altium Designer Enterprise Subscription) and a connected Altium 365 Workspace. Check out the FAQs page for more information.

Welcome to the world of electronic product development in Altium's world-class electronic design software. This tutorial will help you get started by taking you through the entire process of designing a simple PCB – from idea to output files.

To learn more about a command, dialog, object, or panel, press F1 when the cursor is over that item.

The Design

The design for which you will be creating the schematic and designing a printed circuit board (PCB) is a simple astable multivibrator. The circuit is shown below; it uses two general-purpose NPN transistors configured as a self-running astable multivibrator.

Circuit for the multivibrator
Circuit for the multivibrator.

The animation of the designed PCB
The animation of the designed PCB

Altium NEXUS can connect to a Workspace to provide a single, secure data source and storage while affording unparalleled collaboration. It could be an Altium 365 Workspace – a Workspace hosted on the Altium 365 cloud-based infrastructure platform, or NEXUS Server Workspace – a Workspace provided through Altium NEXUS Server, a solution installed and managed by your own IT department.

This tutorial focuses on using Altium NEXUS with a connected Workspace – the most streamlined and empowered environment for your design needs. However, if you are not able to enjoy the benefits that a connected Workspace brings, you can store your design data, including projects, component libraries, and design outputs, locally on your hard drive or in a shared network resource.

To complete this tutorial, you will need to be connected to a Workspace. It is assumed that your Workspace has been activated/installed with the sample data.

Learn more about Designing with a Connected Workspace

Learn more about Accessing Your Workspace

You're ready to begin capturing (drawing) the schematic. The first step is to create a PCB project.

Found an issue with this document? Highlight the area, then use Ctrl+Enter to report it.

Contact Us

Contact our corporate or local offices directly.

We're sorry to hear the article wasn't helpful to you.
Could you take a moment to tell us why?
200 characters remaining
You are reporting an issue with the following selected text
and/or image within the active document: