Symbols represent components in schematics. You can create and modify symbols for local components in the symbol editor.

Creating symbols

To create a new symbol, you can right-click the project to which you want to add it and choose New Symbol from the context menu.(See Creating a new symbol for more information.) After you have named the symbol, the symbol editor opens with an empty canvas.



To create the symbol, draw the desired graphical representation with the graphics tools in the toolbar:

The tools are the standard tools that you can also find in other drawing programs and work in a similar way. Only the Substitution tool () is unusual: With it, you can insert placeholder text fields in the symbol drawing that get replaced in the diagram by the respective values for the component.

Pins

To make the symbol usable in a local component, you also must add the pins of the component. They are the locations where connections to other components can be made in the schematic. A symbol must have exactly as many pins as specified by the model with which it will be paired to create a local component. Pins are added with the SetPin tool ().

When you add a pin using the SetPin tool, you first specify the pin’s properties in the Attributes dialog. To avoid future difficulties, you should specify the same name as the pin has in the model, and you should correctly set the direction. If you do not want to show the pin names in the schematic, uncheck Visible.

Bounding box

Add the bounding box (the area where a user can click in the schematic to select the device represented by the symbol) by clicking in the toolbar and choosing Automatic in the displayed dialog. (While it is possible to manually specify a different bounding box, we recommend that you always use the Automatic option.)

Editing symbols

You can edit an existing symbol by double-clicking its .ifsym file in the Workspace view. That opens the symbol in the symbol editor, where you can modify it as described above.

To edit the symbol of an existing local component, right-click the local component in the Workspace view and choose Open in Symbol Editor from the context menu, which also opens the symbol in the symbol editor.