altiumembeddedpcbpcb-designschematics
I'm new to Altium 17. Before that, i was using Altium 14 and things were pretty good. I have a problem about components on PCB.
In schematic, whenever i use "update PCB Document", components spread out everywhere of screen. Is there any solution to align them in order? Thanks.
Making the footprint is generally one of the fastest of all the things you need to do. There are Wizards in Altium that help you make IPC-compliant footprints quickly, and you can set the text height, silk screen line widths and so on to conform to your specific requirements and so your boards have a consistent appearance and set of manufacturing requirements.
Populating the data base with all the things that should be there (vendors, part numbers, alternates, prices, and so on) takes longer. Making a 3D body, if you need to, can take a lot longer depending on your proficiency with 3D parametric modelling software and whether you want to do a good job, a spectacularly good job, or something more slapdash. Here's a rendering of an LED body I did some time ago- the actual die dimensions and position is shown but I didn't bother with the bond wire. The typical library parts often have a crude 3D block or nothing at all.
You only make the part once and you can re-use it thereafter. It's a big hassle to add parts to inventory for the rest of the company, so maybe it will make you think twice about reuse.
Anyway, if you're at the beginner stage (we've all been there) and you just want to get going, use an 0805 resistor and it will be sub-optimal but usable (ignoring the 3D features and such like). You can edit it to show the polarity and save it in a library of your own. You can also download someone else's library that's been done more-or-less properly and (hopefully) learn from that and create your own as you gain experience. IIRC, the 0805 and other Imperial standard footprints may use the metric equivalent numbers (2012 for 0805) as part of their names.
If I remember correctly, this was a nasty bug in Altium 15.0, where components were flippe on layer in some situations. This is through the "Flipped on layer" property, which was introduced in 14.3. This was a glitch, it should be fixed in 15.1.2 according to the release notes (6317 Undo of component layer flip no longer modifies the component's Flipped On Layer property.).
I don't know if there is a patched version of the 15.0.x release, because the release notes are no longer available (old releases until 14.3.x are archived, new documentation system starts with 15.1.x).
If you have access to a newer version, I suggest to try it.
Best Answer
This is the kind of thing I experience whenever my zero-registration in the component footprint is off by a lot. It looks like your components have a large difference from the Y-zero-point to the actual pad.
Try opening the footprint editor, press E for Edit, F for Set Reference, and choose Pin 1, Center or Location.
Pin 1 sets the origin in the center of your Pin 1 (obviously), Center sets the origin in the center of your component horizontally and vertically and Location lets you select an origin at any point on your grid.
Edit: Oh, and after doing this, delete the components from your layout and do another "Update PCB Document" to reimport the components to good default locations.