Electronics > Altium Designer

Altium Library Questions

(1/1)

electrode:
I've done a few projects in Altium now, but have a couple of library questions for you guys:

1) Are project folders containing the PCB and schematic self-contained? That is, if I have a bunch of folders elsewhere on my computer containing the libraries used, but zip up and move just the project folder, can I safely edit the schematic and PCB on a PC without those special libraries, or will it have some sort of "part not found" error?
(I know the PCB is standalone, but I'm thinking in terms of being able to edit the schematic and add more of the same custom parts and have it recognise footprints with the PCB, etc...)

2) For every project I do, I've add to "add existing to project" and select the libraries I like from the C drive, otherwise the add component button will only have the usual ~5 basic libraries. However, I've noticed that 2 of my custom libraries that I used with my very first project are always loaded in by default, but I'm not sure how to do this. Does anyone know where the option to "add a library to every project from now on" option is?

Thanks!

EEVblog:

--- Quote from: electrode on February 13, 2012, 06:44:02 am ---I've done a few projects in Altium now, but have a couple of library questions for you guys:

1) Are project folders containing the PCB and schematic self-contained? That is, if I have a bunch of folders elsewhere on my computer containing the libraries used, but zip up and move just the project folder, can I safely edit the schematic and PCB on a PC without those special libraries, or will it have some sort of "part not found" error?
(I know the PCB is standalone, but I'm thinking in terms of being able to edit the schematic and add more of the same custom parts and have it recognise footprints with the PCB, etc...)

--- End quote ---

Yeah. once you place a part in the schematic or PCB, it's stored in the SCH or PCB file, so no further need to reference any library unless you specifically want to do an update. If the library is in the your loaded project, then it will automatically search there and find it by default (there is an option to enable/disable this I think). So in that case, yes, using local project libraries you can move your project files anywhere you want.
It's only when using system libraries that things get broken.

Dave.

electrode:
Ah, that's good. Thanks for the fast reply.

gxti:

--- Quote from: electrode on February 13, 2012, 06:44:02 am ---2) For every project I do, I've add to "add existing to project" and select the libraries I like from the C drive, otherwise the add component button will only have the usual ~5 basic libraries. However, I've noticed that 2 of my custom libraries that I used with my very first project are always loaded in by default, but I'm not sure how to do this. Does anyone know where the option to "add a library to every project from now on" option is?

--- End quote ---

Design -> Add/Remove Library -> "Installed" tab. Or you can click the "..." next to the text box in the part chooser. I don't like using it for anything but the most commonly-used, super generic footprints because it clutters up the list and if I remove one later then it "breaks" older projects.

Navigation

[0] Message Index