Altium library concept?

[peranders]

I'm trying to understand the basic concept with parts in Altium.

Normally you have three elements, a schematic symbol (NPN transistor), a footprint (TO92) and a definition how the schematic symbol is related to the layout symbol (BC547B), a part, part type, type, component (many names).


So, I need to draw only _one_ symbol of each in order to create 100's of TO92 type transistors.

Altium has this: The schematic symbol is at the same time the "part" and to this footprints are assigned. So I have to have 100's of schematic symbols for equally many types?

The alias function is only multiple names, right? How can I use aliases pracically if I want to make i.e a resistor library with article numbers for each resistor value?

[lostviking]

Just a thought, but why would you want to have a lib item for each resistor value? You can change the value of the resistor and have only one in the lib.

I'm not following.

[peranders]

I'll guess I'll have to answer the question myself. I have found out how a database library works. It's more or less what I want but you have to have more things in mind if you use a Microsoft Access database. If you have the database you will have a collection of shematic symbols and they will communicate with database in order to get more info about a part. The nice thing is that you can add fields after the part is used in a project. It would have been nice to have the database more integrated but so far it's quite nice.

In my case here I have only one resistor symbol but hundreds of resistor parts.

[Bubble]

Altium Designer 6 does this kinda thing easily.