Welcome to Artifact

What you'll learn

• What Artifact is and which engineering problems it solves
• How the tutorial series is structured and the order to follow it
• The core mental model: organizations, projects, diagrams, variants, harnesses, and the library
• How to sign in for the first time and get organization access

Prerequisites

• No prerequisites — this is a good starting point.
• You will need a working email address that has been approved by your organization.

Steps

1Understand what Artifact is

Artifact is a cloud-based electrical and wire-harness design tool. You use it to draw wiring diagrams, manage a reusable parts library, group wires into physical harnesses, run design checks, and export BOMs, connections tables, and CAD-ready data. It is built for electrical, harness, and systems engineers in aerospace, defense, robotics, and adjacent industries.

If you have used schematic capture tools before, the closest analogy is a multi-player, multi-sheet schematic editor - that also produces manufacturable harness drawings and BOMs from the same source of truth.

2Learn the core hierarchy

Artifact organizes work into a small set of nested concepts. You will see these names everywhere in the UI:

• Organization — your company or team account. Projects and library parts belong to it, and your role (Admin, Editor, Viewer) is set here.
• Project — a container for related diagrams (for example, one vehicle program).
• Diagram — a multi-sheet wiring schematic. A diagram holds one or more variants (alternate designs).
• Variant — a different version of a system definition, i.e. V2, or "Right Wing" and "Left Wing."
• Release — a formal record that the wiring diagram or one harness was released at a checkpoint.
• Harness — a named group of wires inside a diagram, with its own manufacturing drawing.
• Library — your organization's parts catalog (devices, connectors, cables, accessories, tools, harness treatments, build notes).

3Preview the tutorial series

The tutorials build on each other in order. You can skip ahead, but each one assumes you are familiar with the ideas from the previous tutorials.

1. Introduction — understanding what Artifact is all about.
2. App Overview — interface tour, navigation, keyboard shortcuts.
3. Building Library Parts — creating new connectors, cables, and devices in your org's shared library.
4. Library Search Tools — advanced library search, CSV export and parameter bulk-edit, and the Bulk Library Upload Wizard.
5. Make your First Diagram — place parts in the canvas, draw wires, edit properties.
6. Split Connectors — split one connector into separate pieces on the diagram.
7. Designing with Channels — wire whole multi-conductor protocols (CAN, Ethernet, UART, …) as a single channel.
8. Custom Protocols — define your own channel protocols, multi-protocol channels, and channel defaults.
9. Standard Interfaces — model off-the-shelf connections like USB and Ethernet without drawing wires.
10. Harness Editor — assign wires to a harness, add waypoints, assign segment lengths, and apply treatments.
11. Design Blocks — package a diagram version as a reusable subsystem and drop it into other diagrams.
12. System Configuration & Versioning — variants, checkpoints, releases with reviewer sign-off, and the System Configuration dashboard (system hierarchy, combined BOM, bulk export, analytics, error checks).
13. BOMs & Exports — Bill of Materials, Connections Table, PDF/PNG/CSV exports, cut list.
14. Linking Artifact to Onshape — sync harness wire data with Onshape's Wire and Cable tool.
15. Linking Artifact to NX — exchange harness files with Siemens NX Routing and import routed wire lengths back.
16. Collaboration — presence, co-editing, comments, checks and flags, shareable links, and parallel work with variants.
17. Admin Options — invite teammates, assign roles, and manage organization-wide settings and API access.
18. Using the Copilot — let the Artifact Agent search and propose library parts, build and edit diagrams, and run checks for you.
19. Using the Artifact API — programmatically list projects, export BOMs, Connections Tables, netlists, harness data, and library inventory with API keys.

4Sign in to Artifact

Artifact uses passwordless, email-based login. You don't set or need to remember a password.

1. Go to your organization's Artifact URL and click Login.
2. On the Sign in to Artifact page, enter your email address in the field below the prompt.
3. Click Send Login Code.
4. Check your inbox for an 8-character one-time code and enter it in the Enter your code field.
5. Click Verify Code.

5Confirm organization access

After verifying your code, Artifact checks your organization membership.

• If you are already a member, you land on the main app.
• If you are authenticated but have not been added to an organization, you land on the Access Pending page. Contact your organization administrator, or email info@artifact.engineer for help.

User roles are Administrator, Editor, and Viewer. Viewers can open diagrams in read-only mode (but can still add comments).

6Land on the welcome screen

On a successful login you arrive at the Welcome splash. From here you can:

• Click Open Project to pick an existing project.
• Browse the Recent Projects list.
• Click Restore tabs from previous session to pick up where you left off.
• Watch the embedded tutorial videos (the same topics this written series covers).

Summary

You now know what Artifact is, how its work is structured (organization → project → diagram → variant → harness), how the library fits in, and how to log in with a one-time email code. The rest of the series will walk you through actually using each of those concepts to design a wiring system end to end.

What's next

• → Tutorial 2: App Overview — learn the navigation, panes, and keyboard shortcuts that you will use in every other tutorial.
• → Tutorial 3: Building Library Parts — once you know the layout, start creating reusable connectors and cables.