Problems experimenting with your Layer Type download files

[Tom Yunghans]

Hi Robert,

I saw your Youtube video titled "Altium - How to set and use Layer Type (very useful in libraries). I went ahead and downloaded the project you archived, unzipped it and invoked it (Simple project.PrjPcb) in my version of Altium (20.1.14). I went to the PCB (PCB.PcbDoc) and deleted the 8 resistors, saved the file, and then went to the schematic (Schematic.SchDoc) and performed a "Design/Update PCB Document". I then executed the ECO and only four of the eight resistors were placed back in the PCB, the other four got "Footprint Not Found" error messages (see snapshots below).

When I look at the libraries, everything looks okay, the fooprints show up correctly in SchLib libraries. I have been having a lot trouble lately with this type of error. Do you have any idea what is happening? Is this a bug in the AD20 software, or is it just my inexperience?

Thank you!

[Tom Yunghans]

Hi Robert,

I was incorrect when I stated that the libraries all looked correct. For those 4 parts, the footprint path was pointed back to your D: drive, so that is why it couldn't find the footprint for those parts when trying to update the PCB. I edited those links to point at my drive where I placed the design and it works. Is there a way that you could have specified a relative path so that it would have worked without editing the library path?

Thank you.

[robertferanec]

I think, you can use relative path for libraries in Altium ... but I was not experimenting with it much.

[WhoKnewKnows]

When developing lots of projects, it's handy to reference a few central libraries. You can install the library into Altium, this is the usual way to use Altium working for a single company.

If you are working with a variety of projects and libraries, as if you were a contractor working for a variety of companies, instead of installing each client's library into Altium, and risking cross use, etc., you can add each project's library files to each project (right click on project, add existing to project). Altium looks for library content within the project first before searching installed libraries.