Altium Schematics and Footprints Guidelines

This page is written by Sam Chen and Abelle Jayadinata based on the materials covered in the Winter 2024 Altium PCB Workshops hosted by Evelyn Nutt. All credits go to her.

If you're looking at this right now, you have probably finished the design process of your PCB and picked out all the parts/components you need. If yes, it is highly recommended to make sure you also have schematics and footprints associated with every part. If not, you should refer to The Art of PCB Design page before coming back.

PCB Terminology

• PCB: Printed Circuit Board.

Schematics Terminology

• Symbol: the representation of an electrical component in the schematic file.
• Net: Any wire that connects to a node. In Altium, the name of the net is the combination of the index of the block (chip) and the component it connects to.
• Tags: Yellow-colored tags. The input (inward pointing) tag means “From another sheet, import this net” defined by the name of the net indicated in the tag. There can also be output and bidirectional tags.
• Harness: a group of wires connected to the same terminal. In GPIO/SPI/UART/I2C serial communication methods, the TX and RX data lines will often be grouped by a harness for clarity.

Footprint Terminology

• Footprint: the representation of an electrical component in the PCB file. They are also the physical traces of the components that you will see on the PCB.
• Via: A hole in the PCB, electrically connects through the board. The copper conductive part is inside the PCB. The purpose of this is to move the copper track to the other side of the PCB and prevent two nets from overlapping on the same side.