Altium designer (without vault) only comes with through hole components (resistor, capacitor) in the component library. I want to design SMD capacitors and resistors on my own but I want to reuse the schematic symbol of the default Altium components. How can I do that?
Electrical – Altium – Use an existing component symbol for another component
altium
Related Solutions
I had to decide something similar years ago.
At that time, Altium were selling their Vault solution which can have several different configurations:
- The Vault is in the Cloud: No internet access = no file access. If you don't continue with Altium and stop to pay the yearly subscription you don't have access to your data anymore. NOT ACCEPTABLE
- The Vault is on a server in your company. The content is encrypted. In order to access the data, you have to identify yourself to the Altium web services which unlock the access to your own server. Drawback: If you don't continue with Altium and stop to pay the yearly subscription you don't have access to your own server data anymore. No internet access = no data access! NOT ACCEPTABLE
- The Vault and the identification server are on a server in your company: your are 100% independent. That's good. This option was advertised, but during years Altium said that it's not available yet, or under test, but "soon" you will be able to have that.
Our conclusion was: If you want to be free, to be the only master of your data access, either you use the Vault on a custom server and you control everything, or you stick with SVN and forget all their stuff such as "unified design", "release management", etc...
If things have changed in between, feel free to update my answer with the latest conditions from Altium.
EDIT:
Things have changed in between!
- None of the new options require internet access to use your Vault.
- The data is never encrypted thus it is always possible to recover the data.
- The license for the Vault is now perpetual and it is still working even in the case of stopping the "subscription program"
- The authentication is not based on an Altium web server anymore.
- The data is always stored inside your company and under your full control.
- The release process in not fixed anymore and supports a lot of customization.
- SVN or any version control system is used for the version control of your day to day work. The vault is only there to store your components and the released work.
Now there are two options:
- The personal Vault solution: only one user, data is stored locally (in a local Vault), reduced functionality. But no additional licences are required.
- The vault server. Several users, data is stored in the Vault server, all the functionalities.
In one word: It seems that they have heard the response of the market and fixed the major issues.
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.
Best Answer
You need to create an Altium PCB library that contains all of your SMD footprints. Once you have your PCB library created, open the SCH library containing the symbols you want to reuse, select the part whose symbol you want, and open its properties (double-click it in the SCH Lib tab, or right-click it and choose "properties"). Then in the "Models" section at the bottom right of the properties window that pops up, use the "Add" button to add your footprints.