Altium desigwork-flow in a small company? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Jonson_7
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: September 14, 2022, 06:21:31 pm
content: Hello Fellow Altium usersI have a question regarding Altium. I have recently been hired in a small company as a electronic developer. Im the only developer and the copmany have only used KiKad before Altium. Im new to Altium as well but I feel like im getting the hang of it and I have experience with other cad software before.My question is regarding workflow. The work I do for this company is very agile to say the least, designs change all the time. Both schematic and layout-vise. I like working like this though. But I feel Altium is in the way for this kind of workflow. Let me elaborate:When-ever i have to make a new component, which is all the time, because the company dont have a standard library or any templates, then I navigate to explore and push "add new" in the correct component-category, and start filling out the parrameters, or even auto-import-parameters. But the process of making&importing a foot-print from a manufacturer seems slow to me. I either import a footprint from a library-file (but then I have to exclude alle the foot-prints I dont want from this library) or i push the "add-new-footprint" button and simply copy-paste the footprint from another opened footprint. If I see a footprint I like from the components-tab then I cant seem a way to just copy it to my cloud-library or local-library. I dunno If im doing anything wrong here.To put it shortly, I feel like I spend a lot of time trying to import the right footprints. And it feels like Im doing something wrong. Therefore I wanted to know if there's any experienced electronic engineers out there with a different take on the work-flow? How do you add components and footprints, and do you do it often?Best Regards from a small company.

author: temperance
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 14, 2022, 06:38:06 pm
content: 1. Don't use footprints sourced from the web. You will end up with a zillion different footprints for the same component size. Very often those web-sourced footprints are wrong.2. Use database libraries which makes it very easy to add components. You can for example create libraries for an E24 series resistors in 0402, 0603,... by just adding some lines into the database.

author: thm_w
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 14, 2022, 08:46:48 pm
content: "designs change all the time"Are these designs changing and actually being produced? Or are we talking conceptualizing ideas, and never being produced. If its the second one...

author: Doctorandus_P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2022, 07:24:39 pm
content: Why not just stay with KiCad?Apparently they already have experience with KiCad, so why change?

author: PatrickCPE
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: September 15, 2022, 09:53:25 pm
content: I did find that the altium vault part footprints were correct when I used them. The issue is that people tend to buy those parts out right away so if it's mass production they're not much help. You'd need to spin up a footprint for whatever part you can actually get