Make your First Diagram

What you'll learn

• How to create a new diagram
• How to place library parts on the canvas
• How to connect components together — pin-to-pin wires, bulk wiring with Quick Connect, and dragging a cable in from the Library
• How to edit selection-specific properties (reference name, color, gauge, harness)
• How to split a port into subports and pull a port off to create a split-device
• How to group, bundle, and split routes
• How to add annotations to the diagram
• How to adjust page properties — paper size, orientation, and title-block fields
• How to pull updates from the library into a diagram when a part changes
• How to check your work with the analysis panes (Search, Harnesses, Nets, ERCs, Comments)

Prerequisites

• Complete Tutorial 2: App Overview for layout and shortcuts.
• Complete Tutorial 3: Building Library Parts so you have at least one connector, one cable, and one device to place.

Steps

1Create a new diagram

1. Click the Diagrams tab in the left sidebar.
2. Click Create New Diagram at the bottom of the explorer (or right-click a folder and choose New Diagram).
3. The new diagram is named New Diagram with an initial version called Initial Draft. The name enters inline rename mode immediately — type a new name (e.g. Power Distribution) and press Enter.
4. The diagram opens as a new editor tab on the right.

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2Place your first components

Switch to the Library sidebar (or press L) and use either of two methods:

• Drag: click and drag a device, cable, connector, inline component, or terminal from the library onto the canvas.
• Add to Diagram: hover the library row and click the "..." button (or right-click the row), then choose Add to Diagram to drop it into the active diagram. For a built-in/public part the action reads Download and Add to Diagram.

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3Connect components with wires

Once parts are on the canvas, connect their pins. There are three ways you can do this:

A device port already includes its mating connector. In Artifact, a device's port carries both its base connector and the mating connector that plugs into it. You wire straight to the port — there's no separate step to add and link the two halves like in many other tools.

Draw a wire pin-to-pin.:

1. Hover a pin on a component — the cursor becomes a crosshair over the small handle dot at the edge of the port.
2. Click and drag from that pin; the wire will follow your cursor.
3. Release over a pin on another component's pin. The wire snaps and connects as a default wire (select it to edit its properties).

After you have pin-to-pin wires drawn, you can bundle them and assign it a part name (Step 6).

Bulk-wire with Quick Connect.:

1. Click the first port, then Shift+Click the second so both are selected.
2. Click the floating Quick Connect button above the second port (or right-click → Quick Connect).
3. In the modal, map source pins to target pins and confirm — all wires are created at once.

Drag a cable in from the Library.:

1. From the Library sidebar, drag a Cable onto the canvas. It drops as a pre-built cable. If the cable defines COTS (factory-terminated) connectors, those connector are placed at each end automatically.
2. Drag each loose end onto a target pin to wire it into the system; the end snaps and connects.

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4Edit a selection in the Properties pane

The right pane (Properties) is context-sensitive. Toggle it with Ctrl/Cmd+P.

For a device or connector, the most relevant sections are:

• Reference Name, Label, Part Name (with buttons to show/hide it on the diagram)
• Port Pinouts — pin table per port
• Show Pinout Table / Hide Pinout Table
• Styling — background color, border, port width
• Grouping — group name and styling
• Linked Parts — connectors, cables, devices, accessories, tools, backshells
• Notes

For a wire or cable:

• Reference Name, Part Name
• Insulation Color, Wire Gauge, Routed Length + unit
• Harness — type a new harness name or pick one (key for Tutorial 6: Harness Editor)
• Action tiles: Show Harness, Show Net, Twist Wire, Split Route / Unify Route, Bisect Cable, Reset Route, Enable/Disable Hopping
• Bundle Information — Create Bundle (b), Unbundle Wires (u), Add to Bundle, Remove from Bundle
• Cable Contents / Bundle Contents — list of child wires with per-wire show/hide and net-jump

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5Split ports into subports and split-devices

A device's pins don't have to stay in one block. You can break a port into multiple subports, or pull a port off onto its own split-device block, to keep a busy device readable.

Split a port into subports (Properties pane). Subports divide one physical port into several named blocks that each carry a subset of its pins — useful when one connector serves multiple functions you want to show separately.

1. Select the device and open the Port Pinouts section in the Properties pane (Step 4). Each port shows a grid of pins (rows) by subport (columns).
2. On a pin row, click the Add Subport button to move that pin into a new subport column.
3. Repeat for the pins that belong together; they render as a separate block on the device.
4. Rename a subport from its column header.

Pull a port off to make a split-device. A split-device is a separate block of the same device that you can position independently — handy for a large device or connector whose ports sit near different subsystems.

1. On the device, grab a port by its label/header and drag it away from the device body.
2. Drop it on empty canvas, away from any existing block. A new block of the same device appears there, carrying that port.
3. The device now spans multiple blocks but stays one part for BOM, nets, and harnessing. (A device must have more than one port — you can't strand its only port.)

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6Bundle, twist, and split routes

Use these single-key shortcuts (also available from context menus and Properties tiles) to keep your schematic readable.

• B — bundle the selected wires into a cable
• U — unbundle a cable back into individual wires
• T — twist or untwist the selected wires
• S — split or unify a wire route at the cursor
• G — group or ungroup the selected nodes

To replace a wire with a multi-wire bundle or vice versa, use the Replace with Bundle / Replace with default wire action in the Properties pane.

7Add annotations

Annotations are documentation drawn on top of the sheet — labels, shapes, arrows, tables, and build notes. Add them two ways:

• From the Library — drag an Annotations tile at the top of the Library sidebar (Text label, Rectangle, Circle, Arrow, Build Note) onto the canvas.
• From the canvas — right-click empty space → Add Annotation submenu:
  • Add Textbox — plain text label
  • Add Rectangle / Add Circle — shaped textboxes
  • Add Arrow — directional arrow
  • Add Build Note — diamond annotation
  • Add PDF/Image — opens a file picker
  • Add Table — creates a table

8Align and organize the layout

Right-click one or more selected nodes for layout helpers:

• Align Nodes → Top, Middle, Bottom, Left, Center, Right
• Distribute Nodes Vertically / Distribute Nodes Horizontally
• Send to Front / Send to Back

For symbol devices, use R to rotate 90° and F to flip. Use Fit to View at the bottom-left of the canvas to recenter.

9Page Settings

Click empty canvas (deselect everything) so the right pane shows Diagram Properties. This is where you set the sheet format and the title-block metadata that appears on exports.

• Title-block fields — Owner, Organization, and Comments populate the drawing's title block and carry into PDF exports.
• Page Settings (collapsible) splits into two groups:
  • Display — view toggles for the editor: Pin Reorder Warning, Page Borders, Show Grid, Capitalize Build Notes, and Pin Table Row Shading.
  • Layout — the sheet format that defines the printed drawing: Title Box Size, Paper Size, Scale, and Orientation (Portrait / Landscape).

Set Paper Size and Orientation before you export so the rendered PDF/PNG matches your sheet (Tutorial 9: BOMs & Exports).

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10Pull in updates from the library

When you place a part, Artifact copies its library definition into the diagram, so your drawing stays self-contained. If someone later changes that part in the library (a new pinout, part number, insulation color, added or removed pins, etc.), your diagram keeps its existing copy until you choose to pull the change in — a library edit never silently rewrites your diagram.

1. Click empty canvas to deselect everything so the right pane shows Diagram Properties.
2. Click the Update from Library button (book icon). It glows orange when the diagram has parts that differ from the library.
3. The Update from Library modal opens with one row per changed item, laid out in three columns: the item, its Diagram Values (what you have now), and the incoming Library Values.
   • Toggle Group by Part Name to group changes by part rather than by each placed instance, and use Expand Rows / Collapse Rows to drill in.
   • For each change, click the Library Values cell (turns green) to take the update, or the Diagram Values cell (orange) to keep what you have. The column headers select or clear everything at once.
   • Ignore a part or row to move it to the Ignored Updates section so it stops showing as pending (click Stage to bring it back). The ↗ opens the part in the Library; the scan icon selects the affected parts on the canvas.
4. Click Apply Selected Changes to update the diagram, or Cancel to close without changes.

Changing a placed part's Part Name, or a design block's version (Tutorial 8: Design Blocks), can also open this modal pre-filtered to just the items you touched.

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11Check your work with the analysis pane

The editor's left pane (separate from the main Diagrams/Library sidebar) holds the analysis tabs. Open them from the pane's tab strip or with the shortcuts below. Each lists items for the active diagram and lets you click through to the canvas.

• Search (Ctrl/Cmd+F) — find any device, connector, pin, net, or wire by name (placeholder Search Diagram...). Click a result to select and center it.
• Harnesses (Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+H) — lists every harness in the diagram with its wire count. Click a row to select all of that harness's wires on the canvas; double-click it (or the Open harness viewer ↗ icon) to open its physical layout in a new tab. See Tutorial 6: Harness Editor for the full physical-layout workflow.
• Nets (Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+N) — shows every computed electrical net (header Nets (N)). Click a net to highlight all the pins and wires on it.
• ERCs (Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+R) — Electrical Rules Checks. Tick the checks you want (e.g. Components without P/Ns, Disconnected Wires), click Run, then click any failure to jump to the offending item. This is the quickest first sanity check on a new diagram.
• Comments (Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+C) — review threads pinned to the canvas. See Tutorial 13: Collaboration.

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Summary

You created a draft diagram, placed devices and connectors from the library, and connected them three ways — pin-to-pin wires, bulk Quick Connect, and cables dragged in from the Library. You edited reference names, colors, gauges, and harness assignment in the Properties pane, split ports into subports and split-devices, used bundling, grouping, and layout shortcuts, annotated the sheet, set the page format and title-block fields, pulled library changes into the diagram with Update from Library, and sanity-checked the result in the analysis panes. Autosave kept everything synced as you worked.

What's next

• → Tutorial 5: Designing with Channels — bundle multi-conductor protocols (CAN, Ethernet, UART, …) into combined channels instead of wiring every pin by hand.
• → Tutorial 6: Harness Editor — take the harness name you assigned to wires here and lay out the physical harness with segments, treatments, and lengths.
• → Tutorial 7: Versioning — freeze this diagram as a snapshot or release once you're happy with it.