Ability to Define the Default Footprint for a Vault Component

Altium Designer 17.0, in conjunction with Altium Vault 3.0, brings the ability to specify a default footprint model to be used for a vault component. This is especially useful, and needed, for components that use multiple footprint models, allowing you to get the footprint you need, by default, when the component is placed into a design (rather than one picked at random).

The default footprint model is specified when editing a vault component, in the Component Library Editor. Simply specify the required footprint model link for the PCBLIB (default) Model Type.

For a vault component with multiple footprint model references, you can now specify which of those model links is the default.

When placing the component from the vault, this will be the default footprint used, and appear as the current footprint, when checking the Models region of the Component Properties dialog.

Once the vault component is placed, you can see that the current footprint model is the one you set as the default, when defining the component.