Is it possible to attach extra text labels to components in Altium PCB?

Question

I recently migrated from old Orcad to Altium, and so I often run into things that work differently. One of these things is adding extra text labels to a component in the pcb editor.

A good example is a board with multiple onboard switches. You'd want a label indicating what each switch is for and also labels for each position of the switch. In orcad this was easy. When attached, the labels would move along with the component when that was repositioned accross the pcb.

Is this possbile in Altium? I could think of using the comment property, but then that would mess up the bomdoc.

Answer 1

This @Hneel's own answer but spelled out after I tested it for myself:

1. From the PCB library, edit your part to have a .Label in the silk layer placed where you want the text to be
2. In the schematic, add a parameter called Label to your part and set the value to whatever you want the label for that part to be on the PCB.
3. Once you update the PCB from the schematic, Altium will replace .Label on your part with the value of Label parameter set in the schematic

Tested using AD20.

Answer 2

Here is how I did it.

The extra parameters for the component in the schematic library:

The extra parameters for the component in the PCB library