5 Helpful Tips To Increase Schematic Productivity In Altium Designer

 

Introduction

Altium Designer is a popular printed circuit board (PCB) design software used by engineers to create schematics and layouts for electronic circuits and systems. With its powerful features for schematic capture, simulation, and PCB layout, Altium Designer helps engineers take their designs from concept to fabrication.

However, with complexity comes opportunity for confusion and inefficiency. Creating schematics in Altium can feel slow and tedious at times, especially for large projects with thousands of connections and components to manage. The good news is that with the right techniques and shortcuts, you can greatly boost your productivity in Altium schematic design.

This article provides five helpful tips from basic to advanced that will increase your schematic capture efficiency in Altium Designer. With practice, these methods will shave hours off your schematic development time and help you create robust, error-free schematics faster. Let's get started!

1. Use Libraries Effectively

Altium Designer comes equipped with a large set of standard component libraries for commonly used parts. Additionally, manufacturers provide custom libraries for their specific components. Making effective use of these libraries is key for fast schematic development. Here are some library usage tips:

• Use the standard libraries - The standard libraries in Altium cover a wide range of basic components like resistors, capacitors, connectors, transistors, regulators, etc. Always check if the part you need is in the standard libraries before trying to create a new component from scratch.
• Import manufacturer libraries - For complex ICs and other custom parts, import the manufacturer-provided component libraries into your project. This saves you from having to create these components manually.
• Create project-specific libraries - If you frequently reuse certain components or sub-circuits across projects, make project-specific libraries with these common elements to quickly access them in each new project.
• Cleanup after placement - When placing components from libraries, there may be extra pins or configurations that you won't actually need in your design. Delete these unnecessary pins after placement to keep your schematics clean.

Table 1: Standard Libraries in Altium

Library Name	Description
Analog Libraries	Operational amplifiers, comparators, audio amps, etc.
Connector Libraries	Various standardized connectors and ports
Diode Libraries	Different types of diode components
Discrete Semiconductor Libraries	Transistors, MOSFETs, JFETs, etc.
Interface Libraries	Line drivers, level shifters, isolators, etc.
Microcontroller Libraries	MCUs from various manufacturers
Power Management Libraries	Voltage regulators, supervisors, converters, etc.
Standard (e.g. resistors, capacitors)	Basic passive components

Following these tips will allow you to fully utilize Altium's existing component libraries and avoid having to create common parts from scratch. This saves significant time across all your schematic sheets.

2. Create and Reuse Schematic Templates

Beyond individual components, you can boost productivity by reusing larger circuit blocks and schematic templates across projects. Here are some ways to utilize templates effectively in Altium:

• Make templates for common circuits - If you regularly design schematics with the same power supply, microcontroller, or interface circuitry, save these as separate schematic templates. Then insert them as needed in future projects.
• Use multi-channel templates - Design templates with multiple channels, such as dual op-amps, quad comparators, octal buffers, etc. Then you only need to place one template instead of each instance individually.
• Include interface templates - Create standardized templates for interfaces like SPI, I2C, USB, Ethernet, etc. that you can quickly drop into schematics as needed.
• Store templates in a common location - Set up a designated project or folder to store your custom templates for easy access. Use meaningful names so they are easy to find.
• Link to sub-sheets - For very complex sub-circuits, rather than embedding the template, link it to a separate sub-sheet file to keep each schematic clean.

Table 2: Examples of Useful Schematic Templates

Template Example	Description
Power supply conditioning	Power stages, regulation, filtering
Microcontroller core	MCU, oscillators, decoupling
Motor driver	H-bridge, current sense, protection
CAN bus interface	CAN transceiver, TVS diodes
RS-485 interface	Line drivers, isolation, protection

Leveraging these kinds of schematic templates where possible will accelerate the creation of each new schematic sheet.

3. Create and Use Design Blocks Efficiently

Altium Designer includes a powerful feature called Design Blocks that allows you to encapsulate circuits into black-box blocks with defined pins. Design Blocks can help organize complex designs and speed up schematic entry in several ways:

• Use for functional blocks - Encapsulate functional circuit blocks like power, MCU core, motor driver, etc. into Design Blocks to simplify schematics.
• Define once, reuse everywhere - Design Blocks only need to be defined once in libraries, then can be reused.
• Streamline hierarchy - Use Design Blocks to manage schematic hierarchy and hide lower-level complexity.
• Limit design changes - Making design changes inside Design Blocks doesn't affect higher levels.
• Enable team collaboration - Team members can work independently on Design Blocks then integrate them.
• Simplify design reuse - Copying a Design Block instance makes an independent copy, enabling easy design reuse.

Table 3: Examples of Effective Design Block Usage

Design Block	Description
Power Supply	All power conditioning circuitry
Microcontroller	MCU, oscillators, and core logic
Motor Driver	Motor driver ICs, protection, and sensors
SMPS Control	Feedback, compensation, and PWM generation
CAN Interface	CAN transceiver, ESD protection, and termination

Design Blocks are immensely helpful for managing large, hierarchical, and complex schematics in Altium Designer. Make a habit of encapsulating major functional blocks as reusable Design Blocks.

4. Use Parameters and Room Definitions

Altium provides two powerful features for managing design variants and configurations directly in the schematic: Parameters and Room Definitions. Used properly, these can save huge amounts of time compared to manually managing configurations.

Parameters allow you to assign model-based dimension-driven values to properties of your components and sub-circuits. By changing the parameter values, you can configure your design variants.

• Use for component values - Replace fixed resistor values with a resistance parameter to quickly change values.
• Set configuration options - Use parameters for things like bus widths, performance options, port configurations.
• Drive from a spreadsheet - Import parameters from a spreadsheet to manage complex configurations.
• Modify and propagate - Changing a parameter value automatically updates all instances derived from it.

Room Definitions allow you to customize the locations, contents, and configurations of sections of your schematic dealing with hardware interfacing or other needs.

• Define once, place anywhere - Rooms encapsulate interface logic that can be placed anywhere needed.
• Handle hardware flexibility - Easily place interface variants like CAN, Ethernet, USB in your design.
• Manage channel counts - Rooms let you set channel counts for things like motors, sensors, ADC channels.
• Hide complexity - The internal logic stays hidden inside the room block.

Table 4: Example Uses of Parameters and Room Definitions

Feature	Example Use Cases
Parameters	Component values, bus widths, clock speeds, gains
Room Definitions	Interface standards, port counts, motor channels

Parameters and room definitions enable schematic-level management of configurations, variants, and hardware flexibility without tedious manual editing.

5. Create and Use Managed Sheets

As schematics grow in size and complexity across multiple sheets, keeping track of sheet names, content, and connectivity becomes a headache. Altium's Managed Sheets feature helps streamline multi-sheet schematic organization.

Managed Sheets allow collective control over an entire group of related schematic sheets and their naming, connectivity, and content synchronization.

• Automate sheet templates - Managed sheets auto-number and auto-name additional sheets from a template.
• Handle namingchanges - Sheet name updates propagate when numbering changes.
• Update connectivity - Port and signal names update when changed on the master sheet.
• Access master power - Power port names auto-synchronize from the master sheet.
• Facilitate teamwork - Team members can work independently within managed sheet sets.
• Streamline documentation - Output generation understands managed sheet sets.

Table 5: Examples of Effective Managed Sheet Usage

Managed Sheet Content	Description
Power Circuitry	All power input, regulation, and distribution
Microcontroller and I/O	MCU sheet plus related I/O interfaces
Gateway Circuitry	CAN, Ethernet, and protocol handler sheets
Control Modules	Each functional control block like motor control

For large, multi-sheet designs, managed sheets help streamline organization, documentation, and team collaboration.

FAQ

Here are some frequently asked questions about increasing schematic productivity in Altium Designer:

Q: How can I find components quickly in thelibraries?

A: Use the filtering options in the libraries panel, like part name, category, and manufacturer. Favorite commonly used libraries.

Q: Should I keep templates as separate files orembedded subcircuits?

A: Separate file templates enable easier reuse across projects. Subcircuits keep everything together but can clutter up projects. Use whichever fits your workflow best.

Q: When should I use Design Blocks vs. Subcircuits?

A: Use Design Blocks for logical functions to encapsulate. Subcircuits are more for reusable physical circuit chunks. Design Blocks usually make schematics cleaner.

Q: What's the best way to handle multi-channel variants?

A: Use Room Definitions to encapsulate the per-channel circuitry. Then you can easily specify different channel counts.

Q: How do I synchronize Managed Sheetcontent efficiently?

A: Limit editing to the Master sheet when possible. Use parameters/rooms to consolidate control. Sync changes intentionally to avoid clutter.

Conclusion

Using libraries, templates, design blocks, parameters, and managed sheets may require some upfront effort to set up. However, you will reap significant rewards in the form of faster schematic design and reduced errors across all your projects.

Adopting even a subset of these tips will streamline your productivity in Altium schematic capture. You will be able to develop robust schematics faster and allocate more time to simulation and PCB layout work. With practice, schematic creation in Altium can become quick, painless, and even an enjoyable part of your design workflow.