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The core of Altium is its components. All manufacturer parts that may be used in a project are linked to design files that we must import or create to represent all aspects of a component, including schematic symbols, footprints, parameters and supplier numbers. This process can seem overly robust at times, but this enables improved time savings and reliability down the line in layout and in reuse of components in future projects.

CONTENTS

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Component Creation Flow

Most importantly, all three of these methods need to create components that follow the Vault Guidelines!

Creation via Clone

Cloning is used for components that have the same package and type (or otherwise just a notable enough amount of similarities) to existing components in the vault. For example resistors, where we may have hundreds 0603 resistors, but each has a different value, tolerance, and power rating (and more)!

This is arguably the easiest and fastest processes as it ideally only takes changing a few numeric values (no footprint work).

Read the dropdown for step-by-step:

 Detailed process

Let’s say for I found a new chip resistor I’d like to use, the Panasonic ERJ-3BQF1R0V. This is a chip resistor, so I know we will have a component to clone.

For resistors and capacitors, we have special components to

Creation via Import/Download

Downloading and importing a component is the best way to bring in a new footprint, when the option is available. Not all components will have a footprint online to download, but when it exists it does save a lot of manual design. This process is for all components with footprints that we haven’t vaulted yet, but can be found online.

The most common sources of footprints online are:

This method allows for some time savings by avoiding the detailed drawing and dimension work, but still requires definition of the parameters and realignment of the footprint to NER standards.

Read the dropdown for step-by-step:

 Detailed process

Let’s say for example I need a new

Creation from Datasheet/Scratch/Custom

Creation from scratch is the most annoying, but comprehensive method for creating a component footprint. This is typically used for components that don’t have data available online or components that NER has created custom.

As said above, this is the most tedious but thorough method of component creation.

Read the dropdown for step-by-step:

 Detailed process

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Pin Swapping

Pin swapping is a feature that Altium recently added allowing for symbols and footprints to be manually remapped on a per-component basis. This allows for more components to use fewer symbols and footprints!

The process is pretty simple, just click the pin swap button in the component edit view. Then use the table to remap.

{2 images, first showing the button, second showing the table}

Official Altium documentation: {need to find}

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