Ability to Add Components from Supplier Search
Providing a welcome boost to creation of vault components, Altium Designer 15.1 brings the ability to search for one or more real-world parts, courtesy of Supplier Search functionality, and then add those parts into the active Component Library document. This functionality is delivered through a purpose-made extension for the Component Library Editor - the Component From Supplier Search extension. Not only do you get a new component definition entry for each selected part, you get all of its parameters, and any data sheets, leaving you to just organize some domain models, and then release!
The Component From Supplier Search
extension.
Access
The feature is accessed from the area of the Component Library Editor in which the component definitions themselves are defined. Simply right-click and choose the Operations » Add from Supplier Search command from the region's context menu. Alternatively, click within the definitions area, and use the keyboard shortcut Shift+Ctrl+M.
The Add Supplier Links dialog will appear - familiar to anyone who has used the Live Links to Supplier Data feature to add supplier links to a schematic component. Simply search for the required part, then click the OK button.
Access the Add Supplier Links dialog, and search for one or more parts you'd like to bring in to your CmpLib.
After clicking OK, the following will occur:
- Component entries for each selected part will be created in the definitions area of the CmpLib. Each definition will:
- Be named using the next available unique Item ID, and in accordance with the defined Component Naming scheme employed by the CmpLib.
- Have the value for the selected part's Manufacturer Part Number parameter assigned as the value for its Comment system parameter.
- Have the value for the selected part's Description parameter assigned as the value for its Description system parameter.
- All parameters defined for a selected part (as visible for it in the dialog) will be added to the Required Models/Parameters list. All will be made visible (associated Show option enabled). This just means a column will be displayed for each, by default, in the definitions area.
- Parametric entries will also be added for each datasheet available for a selected part (in the form of a ComponentLinknDescription and ComponentLinknURL pairing).
Example of the resulting definitions, and added parameters, for the two selected parts in the Add Supplier Links dialog from before.
Taking a closer look at the parameters created to accommodate the chosen parts' datasheets.