I have following spreadsheet in a PDF file:
How do I import it into Altium and place it on Top Layer in PCB Editor?
Electrical – Importing spreadsheet (pdf/xls) into Altium
altium
Related Solutions
You are trying to place the DXF drawing on a mechanical layer?
There are two issues here:
One, there are two import commands on the file menu:
You want the top one.
Second, I've seen this issue with scaling errors. You can make your drawing 1000x too large, or 1000x too small very easily, depending on some bizarre vagaries of how your CAD software exported the drawing. Basically, DXF/DWG files don't actually define what the unit they use is. As such, if you export with the unit set to inches, and import with the unit set as mils (the default), your entire drawing will end up squished into a point:
I've also had much better luck with DWG import rather then DXF import, for reasons I don't fully understand. If you can export your drawing as a DWG, you may have more luck.
A .cam file is Altiums internal CAM editor file type. It's not a gerber file at all.
You need to actually export gerbers, which are one-per layer.
First, export the gerber files (this is all done with the .PcbDoc file open in the editor):
Chose the layers you need. In this case, I have a two layer board, with a top and bottom soldermask and silkscreen. If you are having solderpaste stencils made, you export those here as well.
The configuration here is not critical, I typically use 2:4 notation in imperial units (but I'm in the US, and we use imperial). It just has to match the configuration when you export the NC drills file.
Now, you have to export the corresponding NC drill file. This is the file that dictates where all the holes go.
Again, as long as these settings match the setting used in your gerber files, they'll probably work. I've tried referencing to absolute, and referencing to relative origin, and not had issues with either with multiple board-houses. I generally leave it all as default except the 2:4 units setting.
Doing all this will generate the needed gerbers in a sub-directory of your project folder, called 'Project Outputs for {project-name}'.
For a 2 layer board with soldermask+silk on top and bottom, you will have 7 files (top copper, top soldermask, top silk, bottom copper, bottom soldermask, bottom silk, drill).
For a 4 layer board, you have 9 files (the previous seven plus the two inner layers).
Most board houses just want these files. You generally put them in a zip file and send them in however they ask (either a web-form or email. I've seen both).
Note: that when exporting gerbers and the NC drill files, Altium will export the gerber files, and then automatically load them into a CAM editing session. You do not need this cam file. From what I can tell, this is just so you can verify that the export actually exported correctly. I usually don't even bother saving it.
Note 2: You can also export gerbers/NC-drill files via a .OutJob file. I am not documenting that here.
Best Answer
I have imported into Altium tables such as the one shown, but never from PDF. One suggestion that I can give you is to try to copy and paste it into Excel, and from there copy and paste it into Altium.
I think that it was from version 16 of Altium that the import table feature was added, which not only imports the text, but also adds the border lines of each cell onto the active layer.
Worst of cases, you can re-create the table in Excel and then copy and paste it, since it doesn't contain too much text.