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Component Creation
Templates
All components shall use their respective templates when being created. Templates may specify required parameters, these must be filled in.
There shall be no additional parameters for a component other than the ones specified in the template, unless it is necessary to capture a unique property of high importance.
Manufacturer part search
The “Acquire” feature to import a component to our library shall not be used from manufacturer part search. It may be used only from the Altium Celestial library if installed, and only for active components for which standard symbols and footprints do not exist.
A part choice may be used to auto-fill parameters present in a component template. You may “fix” parameters to map the property names used in the template to those used by the manufacturer. Only parameters in templates shall be imported. Symbols, footprints, and data sheets shall not be imported.
Component Name
In general, the component name should be the “Description” field from Digikey. By default, it will be the MPN which is meaningless for most people. However, naming conventions exist for the following type of components. The Digikey description will often, but not always match these conventions.
Resistors
“RES [value][unit prefix] OHM [tolerance]% [power fraction]W [package]”
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“RES 10m OHM 1% 1W AXIAL”
Capacitors
“CAP [type] [value][unit prefix]F [voltage]V [dielectric] [package]”
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“CAP ALUM POLY 47UF 20% 35V SMD”
Symbol and Footprint Usage
Symbols and footprints for all common components shall use the standard symbols available in our library. You must choose to use an existing model during component creation, and choose from the ones available at Managed Content/(somewhere).
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Please reach out to a lead if you believe a new standard model for commonly used components should be created!
Symbol Creation
Symbols shall only be created when no suitable models already exist. This will be the case most often for ICs.
Designators
Keep designators to commonly used values. A list can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reference_designator#Designators. If there is already similar component, use the same designator!
Pin Arrangement
Pins should be arranged to prioritize schematic readability over being representative of their physical location. The “typical application” section of a data sheet usually has a good arrangement of pins that lead to readable schematics.
Pin Type
Pins shall be of the “passive” type. It’s too much of a hassle to deal with maintaining the proper logic required for other pin types across all our schematics.
Pin length shall be 200 mils.
Parameters
Symbols shall have the following visible parameters:
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FET: Name or (Current, Vdsmax)
Footprint Creation
Footprints shall only be created when no suitable models already exist.
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