Well, it has been a few months since my Roadtest. Win a 12 Month Licence to Altium CircuitStudio! - Review
Since then, I've used Altium CS on a handful of board designs now, but still fairly small with about a dozen parts. These designs have been quick prototypes that will eventually get merged together.
One of the things I missed in CS over Altium Designer was the component wizard. CS documentation clearly states there is no IPC compliant component wizard.
I was happy to be able to import AD libraries in SchLib, PcbLib, and IntLib formats, but the I found the vault frustrating to use and often missing parts I wanted. I was unable to get UltraLibrarian running and was also dismayed at the included library content within CS.
No SMD LEDs? Really? This blog entry was going to be about searching for "AltiumLibrary-master.zip" in github. I recommend taking a look at this compilation if you're using CS.
But then, this morning, I saw a forum post associated with an Australian EE Blog where someone "found" the component wizard in CS. Here is how to access it in CS version 1.3. I always used the IPC one in AD, so this seems a bit hobbled, but it is quicker than putting down each pad and component feature individually. The hardest part is finding it.
The quickest way to find it is to enter "Component Wizard" in the search bar. You'll see this below. You can click on the "Component Wizard" but the IPC one does not seem to do anything.
The forum post I read showed a more indirect way to find it. With a PcbLib file open, click the PCB Library tab at the bottom left of the screen. then right click on the components pane title bar (Look for: "Components"). this will give you the dialog box shown. Note the component wizard is the second entry.
Another thing I noticed in CS was that the hot keys to move between the footprints in a PcbLib don't work. Notice they are all visible here. In this case, there are six Diode footprints in this Library.
So, what is in the Component Wizard? Take a look at the screen shots showing the interesting steps:
I selected SOP to give a better idea of how this differs from the IPC wizard in AD.
Above, I just wanted to see if there was an upper limit on the number of pins. I stopped at 212, but it would have kept going...
Then it finishes the Wizard to produce this:
Now, off to make my own SMD LED footprint PcbLib so I can use the reels of surplus LEDs I recently picked up!
Cory