Welcome to the CADSTARguys Blog - Information, hints, tips and my waffle on the CADSTAR Printed Circuit Board design suite.

Please note that all names used are completely fictitious and any thing written is my own personal opinion or knowledge and not related in any way to either my employers or their customers (or Zuken).
Also this is not a replacement for proper Maintenence/support and you should read the help files before asking anything techy:).

Thursday 13 September 2018

How to make a new part based on an existing library part.

So you are looking for an 8k2 0603 resistor and cannot find one in the library,or you want a transistor that's not in the library either yet you already have something similar there, perhaps the same size resistor but not the right value.

What to do about it?
You could run around like a headless chicken, flapping and being disgusted, telling the rest of the world that the part that you want (and it may only be you that wanted it) is not in the library and you hate CADSTAR.

Or you could simply just make it, new parts do not actually take long to make if you know how PLUS you get to know exactly how that part is configured, exactly what the pinout is and the package size etc. (and by not long, for a resistor I'd measure the time taken in seconds.)

Library creation is a skill that all PCB CAD engineers should learn, either by studying the help-documentation and having a go (it won't bite) or by going on a library creation training course.

So how do you add a simple resistor similar to an existing one into your library?

Let's assume that there is a similar part in the library but you want something different, say a different value.

Just copy the existing part and use it as the base for a new part, it really is simple and quick to do.

Open the Library Editor, open the parts library that has your existing part in.
Select the line for that part, copy the part (RMB and select "copy part") (NOT just CTRL+C) then RMB (in the grey area on the right) and select "Paste" then go to the bottom of the list of parts and there it is, it still has the same part name and definition name.

Then, rename the part (this is important) and the name must be unique, then (another important bit) change to the definitions tab (do not do this on the parts tab), go to the very bottom of the list and the definition for your new part will be there with the same definition name as the previous part - rename this to be unique too.

From here you can save your parts library, edit the new part to make any assignment changes etc. then save.

Do not forget to ensure that your parts index is remade (Parts Library Manager, Parts Index button - if not set to automatic.)

As a tip, when making new parts I always used to copy the part name and paste that into the definition field name. This is a great way to keep part name and definition name so that they are easy to find and works well when the definition is not shared.
If you do share the definition with other parts then you may want to use a generic name for it, however bear in mind that if you share a definition then any attributes used within the definition apply to all parts that use it, so i.e. they must all use the same datasheet (if you have a link to that) etc.

Another tip is that you can do this with multiple parts, so say you have the E12 resistor series in 0805 sized parts and you want to also have the same series in  0603 size.
Simply drag select the whole series of 0805 parts, do the RMB copy and past bits and then the renaming bits. Then you simply have to go to the definition of the first of your new parts, change the component to your chosen 0603, select and copy that into the whole series and your good to go.
If you have attributes then you may also want to check and change those to suit.

Simples.



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