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Hello colleagues I have the following question I have a project in altium, I have a schematic design that is based on THT technology and a variant in SMD but how can I achieve several pcb iterations with different sizes and positions of the components all in the same project and sharing the same schematic?
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PCB and schematic needs to be the same for all variants - only difference is what components are fitted and not fitted. Otherwise you may need to create a new project.-
thanks for answering robert so if i have a schematic where i use tht components and i want to make a variant with smd components how can i make a totally different pcb with that smd variant? I ask because I have two altium projects that basically share the same but the tht and smd versions have different sizes, different layout and different component placement. somehow it is possible to create a single project where you have different versions of the schematic and the pcb?
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What I'm saying is being able to do the same thing but in a single project? since they share everything, schematic, library, nets etcc ......Comment
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If changes should be applied to both boards schematics, but boards should be different and may be with different footprints, than i will suggest following:
Create a folder. In that folder, create 3 folders (A, B, C) with projects (p1, p2,p3). In A should be only project P1. P1 will contain ONLY schematics, and all schdocs should be places in A. P2 and P3 will contain ONLY BOARDs placed in B and C. (B will contain P2 with board and docs and staff). And you should Add existing shc sheets to projects P2 and P3 (DO NOT COPY them).
What will you achieve: You will have 2 boards with same schematic, when you need to change Schematics you can push updates to your boards, or do not do that, AND If in some day you will reach the point when boards will need separate changes (it can happen sooner or later) you can do only one few new sheets for specific boards project, and unlink unused P1 sheet.
This also works great for multi-board projects (AD's multi-board is still no good) or even harness projects or even more complex electrical projects. Do MASTER project, and do sub-projects. -
thanks for the reply and quite interesting this method i will be testing
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beamray I believe, Jorge Miguel needs different schematics too - one with symbols referring to TH footprints and other schematic with symbols referring to SMD footprints. I am not sure it it would be possible to have one schematic with two different footprints for components.Comment
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exactly robert I know that I can have a schematic with a variant using smd components but on the pcb I would have to have both footprints which I am not looking for and therefore I had to do two independent projects and from there achieve the iterations that I neededComment
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- I played with this a long time ago, but at that time there was a problem with this - footprints had to be the same otherwise there was an error. So, now you can have two different footprints in different variants in one component and altium will not complain? How this will switch in PCB? I need to try it if it really works.You can do that easy way. In footprint manager there should be 2 footprints. Than you create variants and in variants manager changes footprint.Comment
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hello robert, up to where I was testing when you make the variant in the schematic with the smd components and create the pcb in it the two footprint will be loaded then when you change the variant the components change the problem is that when I do that I cannot make a layout different (well within the knowledge I have so far)
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Yep, PCB will have 2 footprints. I haven't found any description of the parameters one could apply to variants.
So we'd been left with 2 possible solutions: New project wit new board and new footprints and new schematics, or a subproject with 2 footprints, but one should change footprints manually,Comment
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