Project Initialization

Objective: To learn how to initialize a project via your Altium integration.

Difficulty: Expert

In this article:

1. How to initialize your project
   • Altium: set Duro credentials
   • Altium: checking the project values
   • Duro: viewing an assembly in your library

To initialize a project in Altium linked with Duro, start by logging into Altium, creating a new project and initializing it in Duro with a unique project name and description, and choosing a template. Next, enter your Duro credentials and plugin password in the Login Credentials module to complete the setup. Finally, after the project creation, check project values in Altium, write down the project CPN, and view the assembly in your Duro account, where you can manage components and prepare for publishing your design.

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How to initialize your project

In this section, we’ll cover how to initialize a project in Altium that's linked with Duro. You'll want to initialize a project in the following scenarios: starting a project for the first time or tracking any changes within Duro. Project Initialization is not an essential step but will be useful if you want to assign CPNs to the project from Duro or reserve the project name in Duro.

1. Login to your Altium interface.
2. Click on File.
3. Click on New.
4. Click on Project in Duro Labs.
5. Click on Initialize in PLM (OOTB).
6. In the “Initialize in PLM (OOTB)” module that populates, enter a name for the project into the Project Name field, such as “Demonstration.” Ensure that the project name is valid; if the text is shown in red, the name is already taken.
7. Enter a description for the project in the Description field, such as “Demo.”
8. Choose a project template.
9. Click Start.

Altium: set Duro credentials

At this point, provide your Duro credentials and the plugin password you created during the initial setup. The following sets are to be completed within the Login Credentials module.

1. Enter your Duro email into the username field.
2. Enter your plugin password (set within Duro) into the password field.
3. Click Submit.

Altium: checking the project values

As we can see now in this exercise, the project has been created.

1. In the Projects Window, click on the project that was just created.
2. At the bottom of the menu, select Project Options.
3. In the Options for “PCB Project Demonstration” module that populates, click on the Parameters
4. At the bottom of the module, click on the Refresh button, which will generate a few new line items corresponding to fields within Duro. These line items will be shown in blue.

For example, the PLM part number corresponds to the PCBA with Duro. Write down the project CPN (PCBA, CPN 913-00035, is used in the example) and switch over to the Duro web client.

Duro: viewing an assembly in your library

In this section, we’ll take a closer look at the project initialized in the previous section.

1. Sign into your Duro account.
2. Navigate to you Component Library by clicking on Components in the left navigation.
3. Refresh the page to ensure all recent updates are loaded from Altium.
4. Find the project in your library, which will be located at the top of the list. Conversely, you can also search for the CPN in the Search Bar.
5. Click on the hyperlinked CPN to go to the component page.
6. Click on Assembly to view the Assembly tab.

New items will have been added to the project. In this example, one of the items is the printed circuit board, which corresponds with the board itself and Altium and the other item is the Electrical Bill of Materials (EBOM), which corresponds to the Bill of Materials (BOM) of all the components added to the printed circuit board. The components will be added as children on the EBOM to keep the BOM on this item clean with only two items.

Now, you'll notice there are no documents that have been added at this point, and that's because the release has not yet been generated and published. At this point, you can begin working in Altium Designer, adding all your components, and building your board to publish that design into Duro. You can do so by generating a release which will be explained in the following sections.