Dedicated thread for sharing Altium libraries

[Sideshow Bob]

Altium have for a while put libraries updates behind a door with a big padlock. Even if most Altium shares now contain a (hopefully) updated libraries. Would it be an idea to have a dedicated thread for requesting and sharing Altium libraries. Such a thread should be strictly for sharing/requesting libraries. Not just a simple symbol or footprint requests. I am just thinking out loud here

[avrtopic]

This would be great!  I do have some libraries that I built for my own stuff.  Would we want that up here, or are you looking for the 'official' stuff?

[Gallymimu]

It drives me crazy that Altium has made it such a pain to get their libraries.  As a paying customer I'm pissed I can't just download the whole shebang and have to go searching with their crappy web interface to find things... or use the awful vault system.

SOOOOO ANGRY!!!

[optikon]

It drives me crazy that Altium has made it such a pain to get their libraries.  As a paying customer I'm pissed I can't just download the whole shebang and have to go searching with their crappy web interface to find things... or use the awful vault system.

SOOOOO ANGRY!!!

Being a paying customer, you have some insight into their "customer service" shall we say. How is the vault thing working out? I jumped ship when it was first introduced some years ago now I guess. Are all the design libraries kept in the vault and only users with account subscriptions can access? I am curious on how you think its going. Also, the other products like spice simulation and high speed signal integrity were a joke a few years ago.. hows it going? did they put all their efforts in the FPGA interface/design tools or has all of it made decent progress?

Not to pollute the Altium waters, but I also have Cadence libraries to share along these same lines...

[Sideshow Bob]

This would be great!  I do have some libraries that I built for my own stuff.  Would we want that up here, or are you looking for the 'official' stuff?

I think if someone has taken the time to create a library. And is willing to share it. It should be welcomed along with updated Altium intlib files. What I do not want in such a thread. Are people asking/nagging for simple symbols or footprints. Like plz help! I need a symbol and footprint for my 8 pin opamp. I see this quite often in other forums. But not so often on this site

[mexpcb]

personally I did not use libraries made by others and it's a paint searching on the Altium Vault or somewhere else..

I just to make my own libraries and there is several tools around that makes it easy and it just take some minutes to make libraries...

some of them it allows you to make parts with the component dimensions and using a batch process to customize the Board density, that means you can have all of the parts you have added to you database change the size of the pads...

so, i think is better to have your libraries under control and you can manipulate your paste mask or mask opening for different type of boards and also there are some fabricators that have their own capabilities...

in the years i have doing PCB's i found better to make my own parts

also there is some other topic related to this, on each CAD tool there is not a good approach assigning different footprints to the same symbol or someone's call parts because they define their part on the creation of each one, but some others use to use just a generic symbol with no component detail or part number, and this make worst because you may assign different footprints to the same symbol but when you transfer to the layout it can mess thinks up because you need to select the right footprint for your part.. saying this i find out that it's better for me to create one part with their own schematic symbol and footprint...

getting back to the topic i think it may better to make a common libraries for standard packages and make libraries for those ones but each fabricator does what they want and there is some dimensions that are very different, so you need to check your actual part...

the altium footprint calculator it does a decent job, the only problem is that it does not have calculator for TH parts but you can get the Footprint expert and calculate it or use the LP wizard from pads, i have try in the past the Cadence Footprint calculator and that one was doing a decent job and even you can do DRC's when calculating the Footprint but now that they use apps i didn't search to see if there is a way to run or a cracked version that runs itself or even a version that can work with the full version...

regards

[Gallymimu]

Being a paying customer, you have some insight into their "customer service" shall we say. How is the vault thing working out? I jumped ship when it was first introduced some years ago now I guess. Are all the design libraries kept in the vault and only users with account subscriptions can access? I am curious on how you think its going. Also, the other products like spice simulation and high speed signal integrity were a joke a few years ago.. hows it going? did they put all their efforts in the FPGA interface/design tools or has all of it made decent progress?

Not to pollute the Altium waters, but I also have Cadence libraries to share along these same lines...

so I feel that all of their effort in the last few years has been around the vault and their new incremental update system that supercedes real releases.  It appears to me that they are trying to move toward a software as a service model and are spending less time on improvements that benefit the customer.

As for the vault, I have hated it.  THOUGH it is getting better but it's going to be a bit before I'd feel comfortable using it.  The big thing I don't like is that it is difficult to organize and difficult to search.

As for their libraries, you can get to them all through the vault, or you can download them from the website, but they are difficult to search through in both cases.  If I want a library for a certain TI opamp I can find it, but if I want to download all the TI libraries and microchip libraries it's a pain and you have to click through and download each product subset library individually.  It's a real pain.

They do have a good and updated selection of parts but it's far from easy to use and to find things.

I've been using altiums database library system with a custom access backend and it works great.  I tried importing it into a personal vault a few times and it ALMOST works to use the vault but it isn't as streamlined and user friendly as the database library approach.  It would be nice to use the vault because I think the release and revision control functions could be quite nice if easier to use.

[avrtopic]

I just to make my own libraries and there is several tools around that makes it easy and it just take some minutes to make libraries...

What tools do you use?

[Git]

Agreed, DB libraries are a great compromise, I wish I had discovered them years ago. You can use Excel (or Access if you are that way inclined) and use all spreadsheet power to help create a list that you can then easily turn into libraries, one per sheet. I created libraries semi automatically for Panasonic ERA 0805 E96 resistors, one for 1% and one for 0.1%, and it worked great, add whatever fields you like in the part info, house part number schemes, links to pcblib footprints, CAD models, etc. Search on

altium database library excel

and you'll find plenty of info, but it really is easy.