Your Library is the Foundation of Your Design

Using weak libraries is like racing with a sports car using spare tires!

Your Design Tools Are Only as Fast as Your Library

Imagine a high-performance sports car restricted by thin "donut" spare tires. No matter how much horsepower is under the hood, the car can only perform as well as its connection to the road.

The same applies to your design software. Without high-quality, consistent component libraries, even the most powerful tools will fail to meet your expectations.

The Tipping Point

You're likely here because your libraries have become a bottleneck. Year of "quick fixes" - copying parts from third-party sources or old projects - have left you with a fragmented, inconsistent mess.

The Result: You're spending as much time hunting for and defining components as you are actually designing electronics.

Four Pillars of a Professional Library

Getting your data under control requires a disciplined, four-step approach:

• Develop a Style Guide: Consistency is impossible without a roadmap. You must define everything from naming conventions and category parameters to graphical styles and mechanical layer allocations.
  

• Structure the Environment: Tools like Altium 365 offer powerful organization, but they aren't autonomous. Implementation must be done correctly from day one.
  

• Restoration & Building: Whether your library is in shambles or non-existent, the style guide requires knowledgeable designers to execute the build. This is a massive undertaking.
  

• Proactive Sustainment: A library is a living organism. Without a strict validation process for new components, a "perfect" library will become obsolete within a year.
  

The Reality Check

Let's be honest: this isn't a weekend project.

Our data shows that cleaning 1,000 components - working 10 hours per week takes roughly 12 months. That assumes you already have a configured database, seasoned librarians on staff, and a locked-in style guide.

Without a guide, teams often fall into the Successive Approximation Model (S.A.M.), where inconsistent changes are made on the fly, resulting in components revised in the beginning looking nothing like the components revised towards the end.

We Can Help

At Nine Dot Connects, we use proprietary in-house tools and proven methodologies to expedite this process. We understand that "selling" a library overhaul to management is difficult - it requires a commitment from every stakeholder.

Whether you are just starting out or have finally hit your tipping point, we are here to help you turn your library back into an asset rather than a liability.

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Nine Dot Connects review of performance:

We engaged Nine Dot Connects to take on a library streamlining effort that our internal team simply did not have the bandwidth to execute. From the outset, their team demonstrated a clear understanding of the scope and delivered results that were professional, accurate, and completed well ahead of what we could have achieved on our own.

A key differentiator was their deep expertise with Altium Designer, A365, and library management. They possessed the ability to leverage scripting and automation to streamline what would otherwise have been an extremely labor-intensive effort. This not only accelerated the timeline but also ensured consistency and quality across the deliverables.

Beyond the library effort, working alongside their experienced staff gave our team valuable exposure to Altium A365 best practices and capabilities we were not previously utilizing. That knowledge transfer was an unexpected but significant added benefit.

We would not hesitate to recommend Nine Dot Connects to any organization looking for specialized Altium expertise, efficient execution, and a team that is genuinely easy to work with.

Kyle Cameron, Manager, Electrial Engineering - Redlen Technologies


We have used Nine Dot Connects over the past 5 months for both in-house instructor-led training and contract services related to part library creation, schematic translation, and board layout translation to Altium-based ECAD tools with very positive results.

The training was first-rate by highly conversant individuals with the material and good teachers in their own right. The electronic document translation work was handled efficiently and flexibly, dealing with the realities of our ability to support the effort. They were able to fill in the gaps where our resources were either unavailable or unable to provide complete information. Because of their knowledge of best practices and industry experience, we now have a solid collection of documents that can be updated and manipulated consistently with a common set of tools.

Jeffrey P. Milsap, P.E. Medical Device EE - Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals


I came to Nine Dot Connects with an extremely complicated PCB layout request, including multiple FPGAs with DDR4 interfaces and a large number of transceiver connections at 10+ Gbps. Virginia was the engineer assigned to the project, and she was very detail-oriented and did a great job with the many high-speed interfaces. Communication was always quick, and she could accommodate some schematic changes as the layout went on. She could also leverage another engineer's FPGA experience at Nine Dot Connects to help with the package skews of the FPGA. Despite the difficulty of the project, I am confident in the final layout.

Nima Badizadegan, EE - Calliphony

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