altium-toolkit

Altium Toolkit

Altium Toolkit is an ESM JavaScript library for parsing native Altium schematic and PCB documents and rendering deterministic, non-interactive outputs from the recovered model.

The package was extracted from ECAD Forge, where it is used for browser-based Altium document parsing and deterministic render output. It is also used in PCB Styler. Its parser behavior, normalized model shape, and renderer output can be reused by other browser or Node-based tools.

Features

• Parse standalone native .SchDoc, .PcbDoc, .SchLib, .PcbLib, .PrjPcb, and .IntLib files from ArrayBuffer
• Recover schematic records, PCB outlines, placements, schematic library symbols, PCB library footprints, project document references, variants, parameters, primitives, embedded schematic images, component annotations from PrimitiveParameters/Text streams, PCB pad/via stack and hole-tolerance detail, via-protection sidecars, custom pad shape links, extended mask/paste sidecars, PCB union metadata, embedded PCB 3D payload metadata, PCB component provenance, differential-pair class joins, schematic directive semantics, barcode PCB text metadata, mechanical layer pairs, pick-and-place coordinate modes, PCB dimensions, embedded-board panel placements, placement rooms, project class-generation policy, project-level design bundles, annotation mappings, effective variant views, schematic/PCB ownership sidecars, deterministic wirelist/netlist exports, library render manifests, library lookup indexes, library catalog artifacts, project hierarchy reports, schematic-library section keys, pin side streams, compressed storage assets, schematic project-parameter text resolution, PCB QA statistics, structured diagnostics, and embedded PCB/PcbLib font payloads with basic text metrics
• Preserve raw PCB primitive records through a read-only record registry so unsupported or partially decoded stream data remains inspectable; native OLE stream inventories summarize known, unknown, consumed, and opaque streams
• Build deterministic parser field-coverage matrix, raw-data preservation, parameter-record inventory, parser value-verification, normalized diagnostics, geometry-bounds, fixture-coverage, embedded-asset, library-diff, library-compatibility, library-QA lint, project-hierarchy, and static library-catalog reports, classify PCB layer ids, and convert common Altium length units for downstream QA tooling
• Emit Circuit JSON arrays from parser roots, with non-serialized renderer-compatibility fields for existing consumers
• Render semantically annotated schematic SVG, semantically annotated PCB SVG, deterministic per-layer PCB SVG exports, and grouped BOM HTML
• Build non-interactive PCB 3D scene-description data for host applications, including refined board outlines, silkscreen drill cutouts, and external model projection diagnostics
• Render a static 3D board summary
• Run entirely with local input data; no network calls are made by the parser

Install

The package is published on npm as altium-toolkit.

npm install altium-toolkit

GitHub Packages releases are published as @sunbox/altium-toolkit. Configure the GitHub Packages registry for the @sunbox scope before installing:

npm config set @sunbox:registry https://npm.pkg.github.com
npm install @sunbox/altium-toolkit

Usage

import {
    AltiumParser,
    SchematicSvgRenderer,
    PcbSvgRenderer,
    preparePcbSideResolvedRenderModel,
    BomTableRenderer,
    PcbScene3dBuilder
} from 'altium-toolkit'

const documentModel = AltiumParser.parseArrayBuffer(file.name, arrayBuffer)
const backRenderModel = preparePcbSideResolvedRenderModel(documentModel, {
    side: 'back'
})

const schematicMarkup = SchematicSvgRenderer.render(documentModel)
const pcbMarkup = PcbSvgRenderer.render(backRenderModel)
const bomMarkup = BomTableRenderer.render(documentModel.bom || [])
const sceneDescription = PcbScene3dBuilder.build(documentModel)

Optional renderer CSS is available through:

import 'altium-toolkit/styles/altium-renderers.css'

Documentation

• API
• Model Format
• Normalized Model Schema
• Project Bundle Schema
• Netlist Schema
• Parser Diagnostics Schema
• Parser Value Verification Schema
• Geometry Bounds Schema
• Fixture Coverage Matrix Schema
• Unsupported Features Schema
• Library Compatibility Schema
• Testing
• Scope
• Library Compatibility Reports

Examples

• Read-only utility scripts: examples/inspect-board.mjs, examples/extract-bom.mjs, examples/generate-pnp.mjs, examples/net-report.mjs, examples/library-catalog.mjs, examples/validate-library.mjs, and examples/corpus-smoke.mjs
• Arduino Uno Altium example based on Mehdi KHALFALLAH's public My-Arduino-UNO-Design project. The example fetches credited source documents from raw.githubusercontent.com at runtime and does not redistribute them.

Run the local example server with:

npm start

Test

npm test

The test suite uses repo-owned, obfuscated fixture shards only. Do not add native customer, vendor, or source project files to this repository.

License

This project is available under two licensing options.

1. Open-source software license

GNU General Public License v3.0 or later (GPL-3.0-or-later).

You may use, modify, and distribute this project under the GPL. If you distribute modified versions or larger works based on this project, they must comply with the GPL, including source-code availability requirements.

2. Commercial/proprietary license

For use in closed-source, proprietary, or otherwise GPL-incompatible products, a separate paid commercial license is required.

Commercial licensing contact: https://github.com/SunboX

Documentation and notices

Documentation and non-code text are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC-BY-SA-4.0) unless otherwise marked.

Copyright (C) 2026 André Fiedler.

Copyright, license, attribution, and source-origin notices must be preserved as required by the GPL, CC-BY-SA-4.0, and the notice files in this repository. See LICENSE, COMMERCIAL-LICENSE.md, and NOTICE.md.