Altium SchDoc Viewer

Open Altium Designer binary .SchDoc / .SchDot files in VS Code without Altium installed. The extension reads the OLE2 FileHeader stream and shows:

• Components — designator, lib reference, value, footprint, description
• Pins — signal names and electrical type
• Nets — heuristic connectivity from wires, junctions, pin hotspots, net labels, and power ports
• Parameters — component parameters (including hidden metadata when present)
• Draft preview (WIP) — very rough SVG layout (boxes, wires, labels) for orientation only; not a realistic schematic view
• Raw — truncated record payloads for debugging

Install

Install from the Visual Studio Marketplace — or in VS Code / Cursor: Extensions (Ctrl+Shift+X / Cmd+Shift+X) → search Altium SchDoc Viewer → Install.

Source code: github.com/newmatik/altium-schdoc-viewer

Requirements

Visual Studio Code or a compatible editor 1.85+.

Develop

Open this folder as the workspace root, then Run Extension (F5). The launch config runs npm run build first.

npm ci
npm run build   # dist/extension.js and dist/webview.js
npm test
npm run watch   # optional

Commands

When a .SchDoc / .SchDot is active (or pick a file when prompted):

Limitations

• Read-only; no .SchDoc write-back.
• Single schematic file; no .PrjPcb multi-sheet project view.
• Netlist is heuristic — verify important nets in Altium.
• Preview is not schematic-accurate — placeholder geometry only (work in progress).

Format notes

Files are OLE2 compound documents; schematic data is in the FileHeader stream as length-prefixed |KEY=value| records. Child ownership uses parentRecordIndex = OwnerIndex + 1 (zero-based), which matches current Altium binary exports we tested.

Local VSIX (for extension development)

To produce a .vsix on your machine (e.g. testing an unpublished build):

npm ci
npm run package

Then in VS Code: Extensions → … → Install from VSIX… and choose the generated altium-schdoc-viewer-*.vsix in this directory.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.