Managing components and libraries

Choosing an obsolete or out-of-stock component can lead to lengthy production delays and cost overruns. These types of problems are not easy to identify during design and may not be picked up until the project is in the manufacturing stage. This can be disastrous for the overall success of the product.

Altium Designer provides comprehensive component data management and information resources that allow you to maintain control over parts usage, regardless of the size or demands of your organization.

Altium Designer gives you complete management of your component information to help you to maintain control over how parts are used in your designs.

The secret of trouble-free production is having the ability to manage your component data at all levels of the design process, and to ensure that the parts specified are available, meet project costs, and are sourced from your preferred suppliers. Altium Designer provides comprehensive component data management and information resources that allow you to maintain control over part usage, regardless of the size or demands of your organization.

With Altium Designer you have the option to implement a full database-driven component information system, providing centralized control over component data distribution and integration with your company MRP or ERP systems.

Alternatively you can deploy stand-alone integrated libraries that provide component security and portability when you don't need the power of a full component information system. This gives you the flexibility to deploy Altium Designer in a way that best suits the needs of your particular design processes and company structure.

Altium Designer now includes a significantly enhanced library editor with linking from library components to your company database, a model manager to add and update models across multiple components, and a configurable library report generator that can optionally include every detail about every parameter, pin and model in each component – with images.

Altium Designer's database library capabilities allow you to take full control over the management of component data.

Altium Designer provides the capability to dynamically place components directly from a database library. Data can be accessed from any ODBC-compliant data source such as a Microsoft Access database, Excel spreadsheet, and most engineering management systems. You can also connect directly to OrCAD® CIS databases. This allows you to integrate Altium Designer with your company procurement and inventory systems, and provides full control over the selection and deployment of components within a design.

You can configure the system to bring all relevant component parameters into the board design as you place components. This allows you to check critical component properties, such as availability and cost, as you design, and ensures that your designs contain only parts from approved suppliers. Librarians can ensure that only verified component models are used by the design team, effectively enforcing design data integrity throughout the project.

Altium Designer provides full synchronization of database library data with parts used in your schematic design. This allows you to generate accurate bills of materials and to verify the availability, cost and suppliers of all parts in your design at any time in the design process. During BOM generation, information can be synchronized and sourced from both the design files and the component database, allowing you to include up-to-date part costs and procurement information in the BOM.

Altium Designer's database library capabilities allow you to take full control over the management of component data. You can minimize production delays caused by out-of-stock items. You can limit component selection to approved suppliers and ensure component costs are within project tolerances. And you can synchronize the design process with part procurement, inventory management and manufacturing.

Altium Designer's integrated library format allows you to control the deployment of stand-alone component sources and manage component data.

Altium Designer supports design with stand-alone integrated libraries that consolidate all relevant models, such as footprints and simulation subcircuits, for each component in a single library package. This allows you to compile and deploy self-contained libraries that are fully-transportable and secure.

While you can work directly with source schematic and PCB libraries, compiling them into integrated libraries provides you with a single, secure source for all necessary component information. You can attach simulation and signal integrity models, as well as 3D CAD descriptions of a component.

When you compile an integrated library, all models are extracted from the sources and merged into a single, portable format. You can then deploy the integrated library for use in the end design. Using integrated libraries, you can maintain the integrity of your source libraries while providing designers full access to all necessary component information.

Components in integrated libraries can also include database-linked parameters. This lets you dynamically link your integrated libraries to your component management systems even when you're not using full database libraries.

Once a design is complete, Altium Designer allows you to automatically extract all component information from your project to create a project specific integrated library. This allows you to store complete component data with your project for archiving, and ensures that you will always have access to all the original component information if you need to modify the design in the future.

The versatility and security afforded by Altium Designer's integrated library format allows you to control the deployment of stand-alone component sources, and lets you manage component data without the need for a full database component information system.

Altium Designer's flexible, integrated library search features ensure that you can quickly and easily locate components from even the largest parts collections.

Being able to quickly find a specific component is paramount to efficient design, and Altium Designer provides a versatile set of search options that allow you to pinpoint the component you want with minimum delay in stand-alone libraries or within a database-driven component information system.

Installed libraries can be instantly selected and browsed from within the Altium Designer library panel. The panel will display the schematic symbol and any available footprint or 3D model information as you browse to allow you to quickly locate a component.

You can search within installed system and project libraries, or cover all libraries within a defined search path. Altium Designer supports the use of complex queries across all component parameters, so you can find exactly the components you want based on any relevant criteria. Query results can be browsed in the same way as individual libraries, with symbols and footprints dynamically displayed as you move through the component list.

Altium Designer's integrated and flexible library search features ensure that you can quickly and easily locate the components you need from within even the largest local or database-hosted parts collection.

With Altium Designer you can quickly and easily generate a comprehensive report detailing all the components in a specified library.

It is important to be able to maintain up-to-date information about the various libraries and components within a system in order to ensure that all parts are correct and conform to standards. With Altium Designer you can quickly and easily generate a comprehensive report detailing all the components in a specified library.

Reports can be generated as a Microsoft® Word document or in HTML format, and can contain comprehensive component parameter, pin and model information and preview images of schematic symbols, PCB footprints and 3D models. HTML reports provide a hyperlinked list of all components in a library, and can be easily deployed on an intranet or via the web.

Altium Designer library reporting features combined with support for database-driven and integrated stand-alone library formats allows complete and versatile management of all vital component data, and facilitates the effective and efficient control and propagation of library information throughout your entire organization.

Go back to the Altium Designer 6.0 Product Overview or select a process from above.