In addition, the wizard automatically creates detailed 3D step models and integrates them seamlessly into your footprint libraries. This tool significantly reduces the time it takes to create footprints and mitigates human error effectively. Not to worry, however - Altium Designer features an extremely useful tool - the 'IPC Compliant Footprint Wizard', which follows the IPC-7351 standard for footprint creation. Let's be honest - creating schematic symbols, footprints, and general library maintenance is usually a tedious, repetitive task that - due to predominantly manual methods - is rather error-prone.īroadly speaking, the workflow is selecting a part required for the schematic, creating a schematic symbol, manually extracting information from the part's datasheet, creating a land pattern, finding or creating a suitable 3D model, and finally adding structured parameters to the libraries (name, description, part numbers, and so forth). It is usually up to the PCB design engineer to create and maintain those libraries. With today's integrated circuits and components being housed in a plethora of packaging options, component libraries can grow to thousands upon thousands of entries.

Creating schematic symbols and footprints is a significant part of a PCB design engineer's tasks.

Altium footprint