Great questions to ask yourself:
Does it do the thing without burning a thing? Does it make sense? Does it look pretty? Is it solderable?
Does my manufacturer like it? Does Zacharias think I’m doing ok?
If you have an engineering problem that requires the use of electronics (i.e. you need something to charge a battery, regulate voltage, amplify a signal) you can build an electrical circuit to resolve it. Sort of like how you built circuits on a Breadboard to do a particular task in your labs (i.e. ECE110, ECE159, 231, 212, etc.) you can do so in a more systematic manner with a printed circuit board (PCB) instead. The advantages are that they are more reliable and durable (i.e. no fidgety jumper wires), more compact, efficient, scalable (can be mass produced) and are more aesthetically pleasing to look at.
The first step is the schematic. This is the visual blueprint of seeing what parts you will be using (i.e. resistors, capacitors, etc.) and how they all connect. We aren’t concerned about how they will actually be physically arranged on the board in-real-life but moreso the connections. Coming back to the analogy of your labs in school, they usually give you a schematic, you build the circuit on the breadboard and see if it works. This is similar here, except instead of being given the schematic you have to make it yourself.
For projects, the first step is to select an integrated circuit. This is a chip that does a particular function. It can be thought of as a a black box made up of all sorts of electronic components inside that does something. You know what the function, inputs and outputs are but don’t know what is inside (the actual inside is pretty complex but you don’t need to worry about it for now… unless you want to get a masters or PhD for that). To select an IC go on websites like digikey.ca, read their data sheets and seeing if the IC fits the need for your project (i.e. if you’re making a battery charger ensure the number of cells is consistent with what you need. Consult with supervisor/manager to see if component is good.
Once you selected your IC it is time to make your schematic.
First make sure you are in the UTAT workspace on your Altium account.
Go onto Altium and create a new project File > New > Project.
Then create schematic File > New > Schematic and add it into your project
Read the data sheet and start adding your components onto the schematic carefully.