How To Create Your Own Libraries in Altium Designer

Learn how to create your own schematic symbols and footprints from scratch using Altium Designer.

Philip Salmony, Tech Consultant for Altium and the mind behind Phil's Lab, guides you through creating libraries including how to use the IPC-compliant footprint wizard to create a resistor and a capacitor.

What You'll Learn:
- Steps for CREATING SCHEMATIC libraries
- Tips for managing your own ALTIUM SCHEMATIC libraries
- How to design and link footprint libraries
- Tips for maintaining a clean and efficient design workflow
- Practical examples with resistors and capacitors

👉 Check Out Phil's Channel Phil's Lab: @PhilsLab

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About Altium LLC
Altium LLC (ASX:ALU), a global software company based in San Diego, California, is accelerating the pace of innovation through electronics. From individual inventors to multinational corporations, more PCB designers and engineers choose Altium software to design and realize electronics-based products.

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0:00 Introduction
1:31 Creating Schematic Symbol Library
2:32 Resistor Symbol
7:27 Creating Footprint Library
7:53 Resistor Footprint (IPC Wizard)
11:31 Linking Footprint with Schematic Symbol
12:04 Capacitor Symbol
13:44 Capacitor Footprint (IPC Wizard)
15:45 Using Components in Project
16:40 Outro

[akashrenigme]

This helps, what we also would like is a video showing how for a professional industry design nomenclature of parts is done and BOM is generated

[rajesh]

Hi Philip Salmony, i would like to recommend using the footprint model from the PCB library option "library path" instead "any" while assigning footprint to a symbol. this could avoid picking up the different footprint while using different footprint library files.

[afre]

Here is a neat trick. In the comment section type in as an example this =Value+' '+Toleranse This will take produce a comment like this 1K 1% If the component value parameter is 1K and the toleranse parameter is 1%. The ' ' is a space you could use '-' to make 1K-1%. Another example is =Designator+'-' Value+' '+Toleranse. Will make a comment string like this R5-1K 1%.

[rjrodrig]

Thank you for the detailed explanations

[gabecgeo]

The double side assembly usually increase the assembly cost even only with a few parts

[phillip]

Why can I not simply move items from the part search into my library and edit the existing files Altium provides. Why must I down load or use the cloud system to do what I believe to be a simple application

[fabioleitao]

Hi Phil,
Thank you for the great video.

What is your approach when creating other footprints ( i.e. SOIC, MSOP, SOT-23) especially considering that different manufacturers show slight differences in dimensions and tolerances?
Do you usually follow a more generic approach like a single footprint covering multiple i.e. SOIC8 packages and increasing tolerances if it's required by when a new component is added?
Or would you recommend having a single footprint for each component (at least per manufacturer)? But then how could we fit this approach when having alternative components with the "same" package?

[brylozketrzyn]

While footprint generator advanced a little in Altium, I do prefer creating own 3D bodies. It comes especially handy, when projects are size constrained or parts are exotic. 0402 in example will be unfit in ultrahigh density applications.

[FembeliX]

So far so good. But some important information is missing. I would like to have a separate component in my library for each R0402 resistor value, for example, where all the information (manufacturer, order number, ....) is already stored. Do I have to draw a new symbol each time?
How can the local library be moved to the workspace for access from several computers?

[hocvachoi]

please give me list playlist include this video ? I wanna learn from scratch !!

[hocvachoi]

which "component type" that fit with through hole resistor ( timeline : 9:01 in video )??

[adiredzic]

Isn't the bandwidth range wrong? Should be, .1 to .3 if one follow the Yageo datasheet for 0402

[guillaume]

Hi! Thanks for this video. Is it possible that this is an AI generated trainer?

[izergin_oleg]

На привьюхе резистор по ГОСТу, а не забугорный, я правильно понимаю?

[rrad]

This is good, but it's too easy to just jump to the IPC wizard and call the tutorial done. That's for beginners. For those of us trying to cross-train from another layout software, we're more interested in the common problems, such as a custom connector with mechanical drawing using strange relative dimensions, and custom annotations in the schematic. Please provide a followup for those features.