Altium designer PCB - setting Designator and Comment in PCBlibrary to be used in PCB

[rehakm]

Hello,
1st to say I'm new user of Altium, I've been using OrCAD ~5 years. I converted my OrCAD *.LLB libraries to Altium and see that every footprint has text strings .Designator in Top Overlay and .Comment in Mechanical 1. I would expected that this kind strings are symbolic and will be replaced by specific designator and value when I place my components from schematics to new PCB but insted it added for every part 2 extra strings with real designator and value. So now I have in PCB components that has 4 strings (e.g. R16, 100k, .Designator, .Comment) I found that I can edit and hide R16 and 100k string. But I want to use those string defined in my library because I have aligned them in best place and I set them specific font size that is different for varios footprints. Instead PCB editor forced me with its own strings that are all same size and placed unified way (not always the best). How can I change this behavior? Or does have that strings in library any meaning?

Next I found that I'm missing the place outline obstacle in all footprints - seems this layer was not imported. It was usefull for DRC to prevent conflict placing one component over another. I can see that there is Keep-Out Layer probably for this purpose but it's empty for all imported footprints.
Thanks for any suggestions.

 

[loosemoose]

Hi

Please check first that you have the "convert special string" turned on in the view options.
for the outline they may have been converted to one of the mechanical layer instead of the keep out layer. make sure they are all visible.
component checking is done differently in Altium. not on the keep out layer. it is meant more for routing objects.

 

[rehakm]

Hi
Please check first that you have the "convert special string" turned on in the view options.
for the outline they may have been converted to one of the mechanical layer instead of the keep out layer. make sure they are all visible.

Yes I missed that. Now it's OK. I globally disabled default designator. Thx.

component checking is done differently in Altium. not on the keep out layer. it is meant more for routing objects.

I found some mech. layer use rulez and they reccomended to make place outline in mech. layer 15.
Unfortunatelly orcad importer is unable to import polygons with attribute place outline in any layer. I have to change in orcad to freetrack and then it is imported OK.

EDIT: I'm idiot, during import orcad library I skipped option
Convert Orcad Placement Outline Obstacles in Placement Outline Obstacles window. It works!