部品とそのライブラリの作成と管理

An electronics design is a collection of connected components. The rewarding part of product development is coming up with cool ways of solving those engineering challenges and connecting those components to craft your unique design.

However, a large part of the work, and to many designers, the more tedious part, is creating the components. While it might not be exciting, the components become a valuable resource for your company, and it is essential that they accurately represent the real-world component.

The component that you buy and solder onto the board is the real component, but that component has to be modeled in each of the electronic design domains in which you want to use it.

Depending on what type of design implementations you plan to perform, your component could include a symbol for the schematic, a simulation model for the circuit simulator, an IBIS model for signal integrity analysis, a pattern or footprint for PCB layout, and a 3D model for visualization, 3D clearance checking, and export to the mechanical CAD domain.

Component Management

Effective management of component data is essential for electronic design, and the management of components used in a design has always been a fundamental element of the Altium design software. As the software evolved over years, the component management methodologies traveled a long way, from simple discrete libraries of schematic and PCB models, through database libraries, to the Workspace components providing representation of design components to a wider product development arena, along with cutting-edge and easy-to-use features for unparalleled collaboration during the entire design process.

Workspace Library

Components are stored in your Workspace – one centralized secure location for all your design data, accessible for your entire design team – as a series of revisions of uniquely identifiable Component Items. Each revision is lifecycle-managed, providing collections of certified components, authorized to be re-instantiated into new design projects, manufactured into prototypes, or used for production runs.

The benefits of using components hosted in a Workspace are vast. Some of the advantages are:

• Single source of component data – with a Workspace accessible for the entire team, engineers can source up-to-date and standardized components from one secure location, get real-time supply chain data, and use parametric and faceted search to find the exact components they need.
• Company-certified design components – components are saved to a Workspace for re-instantiation into a design project. Revision-controlled and lifecycle-managed, a company can authorize the 'set' of components that can be formally used by their designers.
• Design-time choice of physical components – for any given component, you can choose which manufacturer parts can be used to implement that component when assembling the board.
• Real-time supply-chain information – fed back from the aggregate parts database of the Altium Parts Provider (which itself interfaces to and gathers the parts from enabled Suppliers) to let the designer know the current costing and availability of the chosen parts, and from all vendors that sell those chosen parts (as defined in the Workspace's local Part Catalog). This information can be added to a component at any moment, including after save of this component to the Workspace – without directly editing it and hence without impacting designs where it is already used – and then be used as part of a Bill of Materials.
• Use of Component Templates – apply parameter and component taxonomy-based templates, so each new component type automatically has the correct BOM-compliant parameter set in addition to automating the correct naming, revision, and lifecycle schemes.
• Concurrent editing of the library – as the Workspace library is essentially a set of Component Items hosted by this Workspace, multiple users can be editing or creating new components for the Workspace library independently, without having to wait when other users will finish the work on their side.
• Where-used Component Traceability – components can be traced all the way through usages: if a part goes obsolete, you can explore in which designs it was used to know which ones need to be updated. If a symbol or footprint has an error, you can see all the components that use that symbol and footprint so you can fix them.
• Component Lifecycle Validation – if a component is in an “end of life”, “obsolete”, or “abandoned” state, you will be warned before trying to manufacture boards that use it.
• Component Models Reuse – a component can be thought as a 'bucket' into which all parametric information and domain models is stored, including schematic symbol, PCB footprints, and simulation models. A component doesn't contain the domain models themselves but rather links to the relevant model Items that are also in a Workspace, so a single domain model can be used by multiple components. If a model changes, you'll be suggested to update all components that use this model, and this ensures that no component will use an out-of-date model.
• Direct Component Editing – if a component needs to be edited, you can open it for editing directly from within your Workspace. A temporary instance of the Component Editor allows you to edit all aspects of that component, including modifying its referenced domain models without a file-based document in sight.
• Requests of new components – an engineer can submit requests for new (or missing) components to the dedicated librarians and get notified when this component becomes available for use in designs by the requestor and other engineers in the company.

Read about Component Management with a Connected Workspace and Components in a Workspace.

Database Libraries

Altium NEXUS provides the ability to place components directly from a company database, by creating and using a Database Library. Placement is carried out from the Components panel which, after installing a database library, acts as a browser into your database.

After placement, design parameter information can be synchronized between placed components and their corresponding linked records in the database. Full component updates – including the graphical symbol, model references, and parameters, can be performed. Parametric information from the database can also be included in the final Bill of Materials (BOM), ready for component procurement.

Read about Working with Database Libraries.

File-based Libraries

If you need to keep your components locally, on your file system, you can organize your components into file-based libraries.

An Altium NEXUS file-based library is an arbitrary collection of models or components. How the models or components are organized into libraries is up to you. You might structure your libraries around device suppliers, or you might cluster components by function, for example, with a library for all of the microcontrollers your company uses.

Schematic component symbols are created in schematic libraries (*.SchLib). The components in these libraries then reference footprints and other models defined in separate footprint libraries (*.PcbLib) and model files. As a designer, you can place components from these discrete component libraries or you can compile the symbol libraries, footprint libraries, and model files into integrated libraries (*.IntLib).

Read about Working with File-based Component Management Methodologies.

Models

From a designer's perspective, a component gathers together all information needed to represent that component across all design domains, within a single entity. It could therefore be thought of as a container in this respect.

Each component is a collection of linked models and parametric component data. It is the models that contain the detailed information needed by each design domain.

The following model types can be used:

Read about creating and managing Symbols, Footprint Models, Simulation Models, and 3D Models in your Workspace.

The Components Panel

The Components panel provides direct access to all available components, including Workspace, database and file-based library components, in Altium NEXUS.

The panel sources components from a Workspace and any open or installed library files. The panel offers full details of the selected component (Parameters, Models, Part Choices, Supplier data, etc.), component comparison, and for the Workspace components, a filter-based parametric search capability for specifying target component parameters. Based on contextual dynamic filters, the panel’s search capability allows you to quickly locate the exact part you need from your company's connected Workspace.

Read about the Components panel.

Where to Next?

Component Management with a Connected Workspace

Creating a Schematic Symbol

Creating a PCB Footprint

Working with Pad & Via Templates and Libraries

Working with Database Libraries

Working with File-based Component Libraries