Altium Designer Tutorial 1 - Schematic Library

In this tutorial, I will share how to use Altium Designer software to make a simple PCB layout. This tutorial will explain how to make the circuit schematic, PCB layout, schematic library, and PCB footprint library. This tutorial is suitable for beginner who never use Altium Designer to learn the basic function of this software.

For this tutorial, I will make PCB for simple 3.3V power supply module. After you start the Altium Designer software, go to Flie → New → Project to make a new Altium project. Then give name for that project, for example "power_supply_3_3_v".

On the Projects explorer, right click on the project that has been created and select Add New to Project → Schematic to add a schematic file to that project. Repeat this step for add PCB file, schematic library file, and PCB library file. To rename all the files that have been created can be done by menu File → Save All

Altium has a lot of basic component library such resistor, capacitor, but it is also important to learn how to make library because not all component available in Altium built-in library. Altium library is consist of two file, Schematic Library file and PCB Library file. Schematic library is the file where you draw the component symbol while PCB library file is used for draw component footprint. One schematic library file can contain more than one component symbol and also for one PCB library file can contain more than one component footprint.

First step is to make component symbol in schematic library file. This the example for resistor symbol:

To make this symbol we have have to add Pin from menu Place → Pin. You can access pin properties by press Tab key on your keyboard. To draw the blue line can be done by line tool on menu Place → Line. To draw a more precise symbol, you can change the schematic grids by right click on schematic library area the select Options → Document Options. In that dialog you can change the grid Snap and Visible value:

After that give name to this component symbol from menu Tools → Component Properties. Give "R?" for Default Designator and "Resistor" for Symbol Reference.

To add a new component symbol can be done from menu Tools → New Component or from SCH Library explorer click Add button. You can also see all component symbol that have been created from this SCH Library explorer.

Add other component symbols that needed for making power supply module such as capacitor, LED, and voltage regulator (LM1117).

 

To change the name or other attribute of pin can be done from Pin Properties dialog:

For the next tutorial, I will continue to make PCB footprint library for these components that have been created in this tutorial.