Generic Components in Altium Designer

Parent page: Working with Components

To expedite the process of laying out the early stages of a design, Altium has introduced the concept of standard, basic Generic Components, which can quickly be placed in a design without the need to find and choose a specific manufacturer part from the available component sources. Generic components are intended as placeholders that are easily replaced by a suitable component later in the design process – they also can be considered as virtual or parametric components.

Access and Placement

When Altium Designer is connected to a Workspace, the available Generic Components can be accessed from the Components panel where they are exposed when the All option is selected in the Categories pane – or from the top drop-down menu when the panel is in its compact mode. Click on the button within a Generic Component tile to attach the component to the cursor for placement in the active schematic. Selecting the tile itself will open that component type category in the Components panel.

Placing a Generic Component from the Components panel

Select a placed Generic Component to access its properties in the Properties panel, which provides only those settings and parameters that are relevant to this type of component. The available parameters are determined by the related Component Template (Resistors in the example shown here). Parameter values can be manually entered, or selected from a drop-down menu list that offers values sourced from all the available components of that type.

Specifying parameters of a Generic Component. Here is shown selecting parameter values from the drop-downs. Hover the cursor over the image to see the result.

Replacing a Generic Component

When a design has progressed to the point where a Generic Component can be replaced with a specific physical component, invoke the Replace Component dialog by selecting the button in the Properties panel. Note this also can be done from the Item Manager or through the project's ActiveBOM document.

Parameter values that have been applied to the Generic Component (here, power and resistance values) are automatically used as search terms in the Replace Generic Component dialog, allowing you to choose a suitable replacement component from the filtered results – in the example case here, two component entries fit the search criteria.

Creating a Generic Component

Generic Components are automatically created through the addition of a symbol model reference to a Component Template, as is the default case for the templates that apply to basic passive components such as Resistors and Capacitors.

To create the availability of a generic Battery component for example, open the Battery Component Template for editing, add a suitable default symbol model parameter reference, and then save the edited template back to the Workspace (Save to Server). The specified symbol model could be an existing symbol, one that has been cloned and edited from another symbol, or a custom symbol that has been created from scratch.

 
Create a new Generic Component by adding a symbol model reference to the related Component Template.

The presence of a symbol model in the updated template causes a Batteries Generic Component tile to be added to those available in the Components panel (when All component categories are selected). Note that the Symbol's Pin, Line and Border primitives – effectively its outline – are colored red to indicate that a Generic Component is in place.

Placing a new Generic Component using its tile that appears in the Component panel after updating the Component Template. Hover the cursor over the image to see the placed Generic Component.