Altium Designer® Integration
Keep one parts library in PartsBox and use it inside Altium Designer®. Your symbols and footprints stay in Altium; everything else about a part is read live from PartsBox. The components you place carry their PartsBox identity into the BOM, so when you import that BOM back into PartsBox, every line matches its part exactly.
Parts data belongs in a database, not a CAD tool
Symbols and footprints belong in Altium. The rest of a component's data — manufacturer part number, stock, offers, custom fields — does not: a CAD tool is not a parts database, and custom fields added there are hard to keep consistent across projects.
Passives make this sharper. For many parts, the specific MPN does not matter at design time, so you enter a value such as 10k and the exported BOM describes the component only as 10k. That is hard to price and purchase from, and it defers choosing an actual part to the worst moment.
Meta-parts fix this. Create a meta-part for a passive, associate it with an Altium symbol and footprint, and place it in your schematic. When you are ready to purchase, add one real part with a specific MPN. PartsBox suggests further substitutes ranked by popularity, which you add with a single click. Change the substitutes over time without touching the schematic, the PCB, or the BOM, so the design keeps its intent instead of freezing an MPN.
How it works
Altium reads parts over a database connection — the DbLib/DbLink interface. PartsBox presents that connection through Outpost™, an application that runs on your machine, keeps a live copy of your online PartsBox database, and exposes the SQL interface Altium expects. Outpost™ ships as a Docker container. Synchronization is one-way for now: you design against live PartsBox data, but you cannot change the PartsBox database from inside Altium.
Each part needs its library reference, library path, footprint reference, and footprint path set, so Altium can find the right symbol and footprint. Set these in Part Settings | CAD/PLM data on the part screen, under the Altium Designer® library settings. A part can carry more than one footprint.
You can expose your whole parts library to Altium or only a subset. PartsBox filters limit which parts are visible — for example, only parts tagged active for use in designs.
Importing an Altium BOM back into PartsBox
When you import the BOM into PartsBox, include the PartsBox ID column. It holds the ID Anything™ code, which matches each BOM line to its part automatically and uniquely, with nothing to reconcile.
The Altium Designer® database library, through Outpost™, is on the Production plan. To use the same library in KiCad — directly, with no bridge — see KiCad Integration, and for the task-level overview of both, see Use Your Parts in KiCad and Altium.