Create footprint of the bobbin of a Inductor with 8 pins and its symbol in Altium

Thread Starter

mothermohammad

Joined May 17, 2014
69
Hi,

I am going to create a PCB of a Power Electronics converter. I made its inductor with a EE core.
I have its bobbin dimension which has (2*4) 8 pins.
I am thankful if you help me how can I create a symbol for the inductor whose footprint has 8 pins.
I put the picture of my inductor.
1588361476601.png
 

Marc Sugrue

Joined Jan 19, 2018
222
Hi,

I am going to create a PCB of a Power Electronics converter. I made its inductor with a EE core.
I have its bobbin dimension which has (2*4) 8 pins.
I am thankful if you help me how can I create a symbol for the inductor whose footprint has 8 pins.
I put the picture of my inductor.
View attachment 205918
You'll need to get a datasheet for the Bobbin from the manufacturer which will give you the dimensions for the part.
 
Hello,
Do you have its datasheet? Maybe the manufacturer or the Part Number? With that, the footprint design will be easy, otherwise, you will have to measure the pin distance by hand.
 

kubeek

Joined Sep 20, 2005
5,794
How hard it is to take a caliper and measure pin to pin distance, row to row, and overall dimensions and make a footprint in the pcb software of your choice?
In my experience it is way more faster and reliable to make my own footprint, than to search for someones library and use it and find out it is just a bunch of unsuable crap.
 
You can use almost any layer you want, except those with copper used for routing (Top and Bottom layer, or internal layers).

What I do normally is to uniform all my designs, for example: Mechanical 1 for the PCB outline, mechanical 15 for the components keepin...
 

jpanhalt

Joined Jan 18, 2008
11,087
You are using a professional program. It may name the layers differently. In Eagle, solder pads for TH devices are at least on top and bottom layers. They consist of several layers, and one usually just uses the "pad" tool. It takes care of the layers and assigning a signal function to the pad.

Mechanical outlines are usually on t-Place (component side by convention). The mechanical outline is relatively unimportant. It is just the silkscreen on a PCB. Generally you do not want the t-Place to cover any part of a pad. In fact, the t-Place drawing may be quite cryptic. You also have to consider other layers, such as t-Keepout, and t-Info. The latter is quite unimportant usually on the PCB.

If cutouts or slots in the board are required for mounting, then different layers are used. Dimension is one of them in Eagle.
 

kubeek

Joined Sep 20, 2005
5,794
If you are not sure, then open some similar component from the library in the editor and see for yourself what is drawn in which layer.
 

Thread Starter

mothermohammad

Joined May 17, 2014
69
Yes. I did that. For example, for an Electrolyte capacitor, there were two layers for its body, one of which was a yellow layer (Top overlay) and another was a pink layer (Mechanical 1). In some other ICs there is one layer only for its body!
Which layer is related to the body of a component?
If you are not sure, then open some similar component from the library in the editor and see for yourself what is drawn in which layer.
 

Thread Starter

mothermohammad

Joined May 17, 2014
69
You can use almost any layer you want, except those with copper used for routing (Top and Bottom layer, or internal layers).

What I do normally is to uniform all my designs, for example: Mechanical 1 for the PCB outline, mechanical 15 for the components keepin...
Thank you for your reply. But, can you send me a manual for the Altium design, especially the design footprint for the unknown component? thanks
 

Thread Starter

mothermohammad

Joined May 17, 2014
69
You are using a professional program. It may name the layers differently. In Eagle, solder pads for TH devices are at least on top and bottom layers. They consist of several layers, and one usually just uses the "pad" tool. It takes care of the layers and assigning a signal function to the pad.

Mechanical outlines are usually on t-Place (component side by convention). The mechanical outline is relatively unimportant. It is just the silkscreen on a PCB. Generally you do not want the t-Place to cover any part of a pad. In fact, the t-Place drawing may be quite cryptic. You also have to consider other layers, such as t-Keepout, and t-Info. The latter is quite unimportant usually on the PCB.

If cutouts or slots in the board are required for mounting, then different layers are used. Dimension is one of them in Eagle.
Thanks for your response. But, I don't understand what is your mean about Eagle layers and so on. I am using Altium 17.
 

Thread Starter

mothermohammad

Joined May 17, 2014
69
Thnak you so much. I saw this link, but I don't understand why in some cases it used the yellow layer and when used the pink layer. Please see this pic of the sent like
https://www.altium.com/documentatio...hments/296850/FootprintMultiplePadsonePin.png
The top overlay is the silkscreen, i.e. it will be printed on the PCB.
The mechanical layers can be used for other purposes. In your example, the green one is used to delimit the component outline, the pink is for the 3D model and the other one green is to mark the component origin.

Use only the top overlay is not a good practice, because you will miss important information at the PCB
 

Thread Starter

mothermohammad

Joined May 17, 2014
69
The top overlay is the silkscreen, i.e. it will be printed on the PCB.
The mechanical layers can be used for other purposes. In your example, the green one is used to delimit the component outline, the pink is for the 3D model and the other one green is to mark the component origin.

Use only the top overlay is not a good practice, because you will miss important information at the PCB
Yes, you're right. but, my meaning is the top overlayer is enough for 2D.
 
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