Electronic – Altium 18 multi-board design. How to connect 2 PCB’s with a pin header

altiumconnectorheaderpcb

I am trying to use Altium's multi-board design tool to connect 2 PCB's.

The PCB's will be connected with a right angle, male-male pin header (shown in image below).

Altium 18 Multi-board problem
Bottom PCB: Motherboard                   Top PCB: Daughterboard

My project structure looks like this:

  • Project.PrjMbd
    • Source Documents
      • Project.MbsDoc
      • Project.MbaDoc
    • Daughterboard.PrjPCB
      • Source Documents
        • Daughterboard.SchDoc
        • Daughterboard.PcbDoc
    • Motherboard.PrjPCB
      • Source Documents
        • Motherboard.SchDoc
        • Motherboard.PcbDoc

I intend to join the two boards using only one pin header. The trouble is that both boards need to have the header library component so that the correct pads and nets are connected.

Does Altium have a mechanism for doing this?

EDIT: I do have the System:Connector parameter added to the header library component.

Best Answer

I would make a footprint on either board with no 3d component installed and ensure the pins match. Multiboard connectors need a special parameter to link properly. Add the following to both connectors "ParameterName: System, ParameterValue: Connector". Then the MBA should find the pins and walk you through the rest. A 3d component shouldn't be required for this to work