Altium drops components randomly on pcb

[MrMetthew]

Guys, I am fighting with Altium 13.1 again. This for a legancy design change. My problem is that every time I update the board layout from the updated schematic Altium just randomly scatteres the new footprints on my pcb, this is annoying and prone to making errors. Can anyone guide me with this? I want th new footprints on the side of the board if possible. See image.

PS I am NOT an expert with Altium!

[Mikekoz13]

It sounds like your "Component Links" are broken. Component links are unique identifiers that link the schematic symbols to the corresponding parts on the board. If the link(s) between a symbol and a part gets broken it will do what you are seeing.

[MrMetthew]

It sounds like your "Component Links" are broken. Component links are unique identifiers that link the schematic symbols to the corresponding parts on the board. If the link(s) between a symbol and a part gets broken it will do what you are seeing.

Thanx. Do these links look broken to you? If so, how can I fix them? I have put them to the left so you could more clearly see them, normally I had put them on the right by pressing the arrow key.

Thanks in advance !

[Psi]

Is it just brand new components that are being placed randomly?
or do already placed components on the PCB jump to random locations during an update?

[MrMetthew]

Is it just brand new components that are being placed randomly?
or do already placed components on the PCB jump to random locations during an update?

Only the brand new ones for which I made the schematic symbol and footprint myself.

[Psi]

double check that the footprints you made yourself are centered at 0,0 on the grid, or near it, from within the footprint editor.
 If they are far away from 0,0 you can get some strange positioning issues

When you update from sch new components are always placed outside the pcb area.
however this is referenced to their 0,0 center. So if the component was designed 40mm away from 0,0 this can mean they get placed 40mm form where altium intended to place them.

[Mechatrommer]

When you update from sch new components are always placed outside the pcb area.

from my "not so" experience, new components will be placed inside its room area. if the room is overlapped with the pcb, new components will be overlapped with anything inside it.

[MrMetthew]

double check that the footprints you made yourself are centered at 0,0 on the grid, or near it, from within the footprint editor.
 If they are far away from 0,0 you can get some strange positioning issues

When you update from sch new components are always placed outside the pcb area.
however this is referenced to their 0,0 center. So if the component was designed 40mm away from 0,0 this can mean they get placed 40mm form where altium intended to place them.

Thanks! The footprints are very close to origin. Your comment made me start to think, I tried to select the whole current pcb design and moved it to another quadrant relative to the origin. I than Added the new components and they still where added on the pcb layout! So completelly different ccordinates, as long as I didn't move the origin with the pcb design, and I don.t think I did. The origin is that marked circle in my image I assume?

[MrMetthew]

I also just figured out how to change the origin of the pcb layout design, same problem!

[MrMetthew]

Okay, I managed to work around it. My work-around was to place the component manually on the PCB (Home -> Place -> Component) and set the ref des to be the same as the schematic. I then went back to the schematic and updated (Home -> Project -> Update PCB Document) and the error was gone and the netlist updated properly.