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I am new to Altium Designer and electronics in general. I want to share my future Altium projects with others, for example, on GitHub. How I should organize a project to make it more "share-friendly"? So that anyone could simply download and use it, without any additional complications.

Of particular concern are library components. What if I use components from my own library in some project? Should I also share the library? Should I share separate SchLib and PcbLib or integrated IntLib? Maybe it would be best to create a project library from the schematic, as described in this blog post?

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  • \$\begingroup\$ If you do create a Git repo yourself (which I believe personally still to be safer than to trust AD18 with it, opinion, not fact), beware of including too much clutter like the "history" and "preview" folder and all the generated reports like DRC reports and what not. Waste of space in your repo. \$\endgroup\$
    – Asmyldof
    Commented Jun 14, 2018 at 16:18

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The library components that are used are embedded in the schematic and PCB documents, so there is no need to create/extract a library. If the recipient has AD they can extract a library as easily as you can.

Of course you can share your own full library if you want but they can get quite large.

I would say to make it more share friendly, output and include documents that don't require AD such as .pdf schematics and .pdf PCB layouts and Gerbers and .xls BOM.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ You mean that if I give you a project full of my custom-made components, you will be able to open and work with this project (i.e. change schematics, layout, etc.) without any problems? If so, then it makes everything much simpler! \$\endgroup\$
    – Dmitry
    Commented Jun 7, 2018 at 17:36
  • \$\begingroup\$ You should only need to supply .PcbDoc, .SchDoc, and .PrjPcb files. Of course if there is a new component they will have to find it in their own libraries or create the symbol and footprint. \$\endgroup\$
    – Spehro 'speff' Pefhany
    Commented Jun 7, 2018 at 18:09
  • \$\begingroup\$ I forgot to ask about the fonts. Are they embedded or not? \$\endgroup\$
    – Dmitry
    Commented Jun 7, 2018 at 20:00
  • \$\begingroup\$ Truetype fonts are optionally embedded (or they may be substituted if missing). And you have to choose to have images embedded if they're loaded from a file (eg. for schematic symbols) otherwise they don't show up and you get a blank box with a link overtop. \$\endgroup\$
    – Spehro 'speff' Pefhany
    Commented Jun 7, 2018 at 20:35
  • \$\begingroup\$ I would certainly add output files if you want to be world-friendly, but I would not include them in the Git history, if you maintain a git repo independently. It's generally considered "bad form" to include generated material in versioning, as it very quickly bloats up the versioning history needlessly. You can post them somewhere else public as fixed releases and link to them from your README.md file. \$\endgroup\$
    – Asmyldof
    Commented Jun 14, 2018 at 16:16
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Just came across this (but havent used so can't really comment)

https://www.altium.com/documentation/18.0/display/ADES/WorkspaceManager_Dlg-WizardArchiver((Project+Packager+Wizard))_AD

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