PCB Design Course – How to make Altium Designer Schematics Library

Creating a resistor library

To create Altium Designer Schematic Library, you must add the .SchLib library to your current project. To do this, click RMB and choose “Add New to Project -> Schematic Library”.

altium schematic library

After creating the Altium Designer Schematic Library, we have already added one element in the list of elements. The name of the basic element is Component. To start editing the element, press the Edit button. After pressing the button, a window will appear from the element parameters menu. In the menu, set the name of the element visible in the list of elements in libraries. The most important setting is the setting of the element symbol, this is done by changing the Designator function. We set it to R?, a character ? means that when adding more items in the diagram, they automatically receive the number in the order of addition.

altium schematic library

We start work on creating an element by inserting pins, thanks to the Place Pin function.

altium schematic library

After choosing the Place Pin option, we insert two pins, as it has a resistor. The pins have one connection pad, it is marked with four square-shaped dots.

altium schematic library

After adding the pin, you need to edit their parameters. We do it after clicking on the pin, after which the parameter menu will appear. In the menu we set the names of the pin to be hidden and set the pin length to 100mil (this is the basic length of the resistor pin on the schematics). We set such settings for both pin.

altium schematic library

The next step is to create a stroke of the element. It is created thanks to the Place Line option. Before drawing a stroke, set 200mil (standard length of the resistor outline) apart from each other with non-connecting sides. To do this, the easiest way is to set the Grid value to 50mil or 100mil, this is done using the G keyboard shortcut.

altium schematic library

To change the stroke color, click on the drawn shape with a line, and on the tile with black in the line options window.

altium schematic library

All we had to do was set the element in the middle of the work field and save the element.

altium schematic library

Creating an electrolytic altium capacitor library

We repeat the steps of creating a resistor.

To create a schematic library, you must add the .SchLib library to your current project. To do this, click RMB and choose Add New to Project> Schematic Library.

altium schematic library

After creating the altium schematic library, we have already added one element in the list of elements. The name of the basic element is Component. To start editing the element, press the Edit button. After pressing the button, a window will appear from the element parameter menu. In the menu, set the name of the element visible in the list of elements in libraries. The most important setting is the setting of the element symbol, this is done by changing the Designator function. We set it to C?, a character ? means that when adding more items in the diagram, they automatically receive the number in the order of addition.

altium schematic library

We start work on creating an element by inserting pins, thanks to the Place Pin function.

altium schematic library

After choosing the Place Pin option, we insert two pins, as it has a resistor. The pins have one connection pad, it is marked with four square-shaped dots.

altium schematic library

After adding the pin, you need to edit their parameters. We do it after clicking on the pin, after which the parameter menu will appear. In the menu we set the names of the pin to be hidden and set the pin length to 100mil (this is the basic length of the resistor pin on the diagrams). We set such settings for both pin.
To draw the outline of the capacitor, select the Place Line option and create a line with a length of 160mil at one end of the pin and change its color.

altium schematic library

The second part of the contour is created using Place Beziers. It is a curve created on the way of points designated by us.

altium schematic library

We create only a plus which is the polarization of the element thanks to the Place Line function. After completing the process, set the element in the middle and save it.

altium schematic library

Creating a PIC16 microchip altium schematic library

To create a library of the PIC16 microchip chip element, we download the Datasheet file for the selected model and find the Pin Diagram section which shows the pin layout.

altium schematic library

An example element will be PIC16 (L) F1705, which has 14 pin.
The first step is to create an element and change its name and symbol.

altium schematic library

We add 14 pin successively because that’s how much the chip has. Pins are called using the scheme from Datasheet. The pin length is set to 100mil. To create lines above the MCLR, enter the \ character after each letter.

altium schematic library

We set the pin at your discretion and for future comfort of use.

altium schematic library

After placing the pin, we create the outline of the element through the Place Rectangle function.

altium schematic library

To move the outline backwards, because the rectangle is in the foreground when inserting, select the Send To Back option.

altium schematic library

This is the end of creating this element. Just set it in the middle of the work field and save the element.