Altium Folder Structure & EE Project Backups
Saving Works in Progress
When saving any project to server use a brief and descriptive commit message. If you have no changes then do not save to server. Local modifications can be deleted locally as well if they are not desired.
In Altium our project folders are as follows:
Ideally we only modify projects in the “In Progress” Folder.
All projects should fall into one of these folders.
Do not modify the schematic or layout of a project in the Orderred folder as that is kept around so we know how to analyze boards we already orderred. This info is critical for assembly and validation. You may modify design variants or parameters displayed in the schematic of Orderred boards, but please be extremely careful and leave very detailled commit messages.
Post Ordering
When a project is ordered we should be backing up all the design files into https://github.com/UWARG/hardware/tree/master/Projects . We do this because:
Altium is graciously sponsoring us at the time of writing and hopefully into the future, however, just in case we want to be sure we also have the files saved
Our Altium is not public and our Github is, we want you to share your designs with the world.
When backing up to github please include a smartpdf of the board so someone can easily look at it. No need to include gerbers as they can be easily generated from design files (including step which is nice for mech people to integrate your board into our system!). Also include a README.md that links to your confluence documentation for the project so an outside observer can find more information. Your confluence page for your board should also link to the github and A365 page so it all stays cohesive and documentation is easy to find for firmware engineers to reference. A good example is https://github.com/UWARG/hardware/tree/master/Projects/Single%20Servo%20Driver .