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frgo , 08-30-2021, 01:13 PM

Hi all:

I am new to AD and am using AD20. I need to use European symbols - but alle the predefined symbols for e.g. resistors I can find are the American style variant. How would I switch to European symbols?

Thanks for any hint or help!

Cheers
Frank

qdrives , 08-31-2021, 04:49 PM

Design them yourself?
I have drawn most symbols myself and do not rely on external parties. A resistor is easy. For MOSFETs it may be nicer to use one from someone else, when you are not that good at drawing it (I think i copied this one, or a NPN transistor...)

frgo , 09-01-2021, 03:57 AM

@qdrives Thanks, sure - that is the manual way out.

I should have phrased my post differently:

How can I use available, supplier-supplied parts libraries that have non-European symbols in them, such that I can (even manually) inject/ replace existing symbols with the ones I need while not loosing update capability or have manual efforts when the supplier issues a new version of a parts library? The "manual way" of providing one's own symbols creates a lot of manual update effort downstream. That can't be the solution, or can it?

// Frank

robertferanec , 09-02-2021, 05:59 AM

Do you have to use European symbols or you just would like to use them?

Initially it may look like a good idea, realistically, sooner or later you may need to reuse some reference schematics and that will introduce all the kind of symbols anyway.

But to answer your question
1. I am not sure if you can simply find european symbols in Altium
2. You could maybe find some schematics with European symbols, generate libraries and copy and paste them - but it may be faster just draw them

qdrives , 09-08-2021, 07:47 AM

@frgo I never use supplier supplied libraries.
I have my own 'style' and fixed set of parameters that I add to the symbols and external libraries are generally very limited in data.
In my 20 years being a designer, the libraries may have contained about 1000 parts. Of those parts in our library, there is a 80% that the component has been used on one of the designs.
Using external libraries, that is not the case. First you can have many different libraries, duplicate symbols, huge amount of parts, lack of detail, naming variance, etc.
Using the graphic symbol for a few components like FETs and transistors is ok, but for the rest, I do all myself.

Now one big difference between my designs and designs done by @robertferanec is that I also do not use reference designs. In part the designs are more simple (no high speed, high pin count nor memory).

Once a first component has been made, like a resistor, it is merely a question of coping it and adjusting the parameter values.
I only use schematic and footprint libraries, no database.
Multiple libraries, each for a specific purpose - resistors, capacitors, discretes, power, etc.