New Draftsman Document | Altium Designer User Manual | Documentation.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Place a Datum Feature on a drawing using the Place » Datum Feature menu command or by selecting the icon from the Drawing Annotation toolbar, and attach it to a drawing feature as outlined above.

The attached Datum element simply identifies that feature, such as an edge, as a reference on that drawing object. The Datum Feature is identified by its Label entry in the Properties panel, so that relative dimension tolerances included in Feature Control Frames see below can refer to this and other placed datum. Place a Feature Control Frame on a drawing using the Place » Feature Control Frame menu command or by selecting the icon from the Drawing Annotation toolbar, and attach it to a drawing feature as outlined above, or place it free space.

The information it conveys, presented in symbols, modifiers and numeric values, is entered in the Properties panel. A Feature Control Frame offers symbol options and large number of elements that can be attached to specify manufacturing tolerances and constraints.

Attached machining tolerances, such as the ‘straightness’ of a feature for example, apply to the specified drawing object face. Attached Dimension tolerances by comparison such as ‘position’ are generally specified as relative to one or more placed Datum. When added to the mechanical elements in a Draftsman drawing view, the combined information represented by Feature Control Frames and their related Datum references can fully describe the acceptable manufacturing constraints for that physical element.

In the example drawing view shown below, dimensions have been added, Datum Feature references attached to the three visible board edges, and Feature Control Frames applied to the top edge and two mounting holes. The Feature Control Frames have multiple elements added, which appear as a sequence of selectable rows — note the Add, Delete etc buttons in the Selected Element area of the Properties panel.

The symbols and formatting used in the various Feature Control Frames is fully described in the ASME standard, however an overview of the examples shown above is as follows:. Further flexibility has been added to Draftsman with the inclusion of manual component Designator control and positioning.

This adds to the capabilities available in the Component Display Properties dialog by providing direct control through the Properties panel of the positioning, sizing and style for individual designators, or designators on a BOM item basis. Also, designators may be manually positioned in the drawing space by a simple drag and drop process.

The immediate control of designators is accessed from a new Component Display Properties section in the Properties panel, which is enabled when a component or its designator is selected in a placed Assembly view.

To change the properties for all components of that type, check the Apply changes to all instances of same BOM option. For example, to modify the display properties for all 0. This is equivalent to locating and changing the properties of the BOM entry in the Component Display Properties dialog. For direct free-form placement of a component dialog, simply press Ctrl while selecting the designator in the workspace and then drag it to a new location.

Note that its Designator Location setting in the Properties panel will change to Manual. When selected, the Component Parameter source can be set to specify one of the available parameters for the Component selected by the Callout, as extracted from the Assembly View PCB document.

Use the Properties panel Parameter drop down menu to nominate the displayed Parameter data. The background style for primitive drawing objects such as Rectangles and Circles can now be set to solid or hatched ANSI-style fills.

For these drawing objects, the color options for the solid and hatch patterns are definable via Draftsman Properties panel, and can be set to suitable defaults in the Draftsman Preferences page under their respective primitive entries Drawing Tools — Rectangle and Circle. The location of the Title text for placed Views and Tables is now able to be set to a range of positions around the object, or moved to any position by simply dragging the Title text itself.

For Views and Tables, the Title section in the Properties panel includes a Location drop down menu for selecting from a predefined set of Title positions. Manually position a Title in the workspace by dragging it to a new location. Draftsman Enhancements New Feature Summary.

Using Altium Documentation. This document is no longer available beyond version Information can now be found here: Streamlining Board Design Documentation with Draftsman for version Note that a Draftsman document can have several placed Views, with each potentially set to a different Variant.

Since the Variant selection is on an individual View basis, rather than at a document level, any special variant strings placed in the document are not interpreted.

When the Draftsman document is printed through an Output Job, the OutJob’s current Variant selection which is at a document level is resolved by the special strings. By default, no parameters are included when a Surface Material indicator is used.

The Draftsman Component Display Properties also offers a Silkscreen setting for the Designator Location , which automatically derives designator locations from their positions on the board design’s silkscreen overlay Layer. Printer-friendly version. Recent Articles. Read this article and you will understand why. Read Article. There is no SPI trace impedance requirement or termination requirement.

If this sounds surprising, read this article to see why. Checklist for Systematically Testing PCB Prototypes During my teenage years, I spent fifteen whole minutes perfecting my hairstyle before walking out of the house.

These days, I walk to work without putting a single drop of gel on my hair. Although I no longer obsess over my physical appearance, my perfectionist attitude comes into Read Article. Read on to learn how to keep your hierarchical design project organized and synchronized with circuit schematic hierarchies. New Altium users may not fully understand the benefits of organizing schematic sheets into a hierarchical top-down or bottom-up perspective designs.

As a result, users often Read Article.

 
 

 

Draftsman Document Options | Altium Designer User Manual | Documentation

 

Жмите сюда printed circuit board design is a process of balancing the circuit design requirements, device technologies, and fabrication materials and methodologies, to deliver a PCB that can transfer signals between the components, with integrity. This article describes the various options and settings that you configure in Altium Designer to draftsmaj design your high-speed board.

Early in the design process, it is important to identify signals that might require impedance matching so that additional termination components can be included before подробнее на этой странице component placement process is complete. Since output pins are typically low impedance and input pins are typically high altium designer 17 draftsman free, termination dgaftsman may need draftsjan be added to the design to achieve impedance matching.

Altium Designer includes a signal integrity simulator that can be accessed during both the design capture and board layout phases of the design process, allowing both pre- fres post-layout signal integrity analysis to be performed Tools » Signal Integrity. The simulator is based on a Fast Reflection and Crosstalk Simulator, which produces very accurate simulations using industry-proven algorithms.

Because both design capture and board design use an integrated component system that links schematic symbols to relevant PCB footprints, SPICE simulation models and signal integrity macro-models, signal integrity analysis can be run at the schematic capture stage prior to the creation of the board design. When no board design is present, the tool allows you to set up the designner characteristics of the design, such as the desired characteristic trace impedance, from within the signal integrity simulator.

At this pre-layout stage of the design process, the altium designer 17 draftsman free integrity simulator cannot determine the resigner length of particular connections so it draftsmam a user-definable average connection length to make its transmission line calculations.

By carefully ссылка на страницу this default length to reflect the server 2012 r2 free of the intended board, you can gain a fairly accurate picture of the likely signal integrity performance of the design.

Nets with potential reflection problems can be identified and any additional termination components can be added to the schematic before proceeding to board layout. The values of these components can then be further tuned once the post-layout signal integrity analysis has been performed. The Signal Integrity analysis engine helps identify nets altium designer 17 draftsman free potential reflection issues.

Note that measurements can be freee directly from the waveforms. The Signal Integrity analysis engine installs as a System Extension. If it is not currently installed, click the Configure button to install it. High-speed design is the art of managing the flow of energy from one point on a circuit board to another point. As the designer, you need altium designer 17 draftsman free be able to focus your attention and apply the design constraints onto a signal that altikm from this point on the board to that point on the board.

This signal altium designer 17 draftsman free are focusing on is not necessarily a single PCB net though. The signal might be one branch of A0 in a design that you intend to route in a T-branch topology, with the other branch of A0 being another signal you need to focus draftskan attention on as well, and be able to compare the route lengths of these two signals. Or the signal might include a series termination component in its path which the PCB editor sees as one component and two PCB netsand if that altium designer 17 draftsman free is in a differential pair, its length needs to be compared to the length of the other signal in that pair.

You can fee these requirements using a feature known as xSignalswhere an xSignal drafgsman essentially a user-defined signal path. You dradtsman the source pad and the target pad drafteman the workspace or in the PCB panel edsigner right-click on either to define that signal path as an xSignal. As well as interactively defining an xSignal by its start and end pads, you also can run the intelligent xSignals Wizardwhose heuristics will help you to quickly set up a large number of xSignals between the chosen components.

These xSignals can then be used to target design rules to your high-speed signals. The software understands the structure of these xSignals; for example, calculating the overall length of multiple nets connected through a termination component, as well fee the distance through that termination component.

The panel also provides feedback on the signal length, highlighting xSignals that are close to designerr yellow or failing to meet red the applicable design constraints.

In the image below the xSignal fres of the CLK1 differential pair are different in length by more than allowed by the applicable Matched Length design rule. The panel includes the Signal Lengthwhich is an accurate point-to-point length. Traditional length inconsistencies, such as нажмите для деталей within pads and stacked track segments, are resolved, and ableton live 10 suite windows free via span distances are used to calculate the Signal Length.

Note the thin line; this indicates the signal path through a series component. The delay caused by the length of microsoft professional plus 2013 an error free pin within the device подробнее на этой странице is also supported, altium designer 17 draftsman free defining the Pin Package Delay.

Main article: Controlled Impedance Routing. Traditionally, board designers would define the widths and thickness of the frfe by entering a dimension for the width and selecting a thickness of copper for that layer. This was generally sufficient since you only needed to ensure tree the altium designer 17 draftsman free could be carried and the required voltage clearances were maintained.

This draftmsan is not sufficient for the high-speed signals in your design, for these you need to control alyium impedance of their routes. Controlled Impedance routing is all about configuring the dimensions of the routes and the properties of the board materials to deliver a specific impedance.

This is done by defining a suitable impedance profile, and then assigning that profile to the critical high-speed nets in the routing design rules. The Layer Stack Manager opens dratsman a altium designer 17 draftsman free editor, in the same way as a schematic sheet, the PCB, and other document types do. Once the layer properties have been configured, switch to the Layer Stack Manager’s Impedance tab to add altium designer 17 draftsman free edit single or differential impedance profiles.

Simbeor SFS is an advanced quasi-static 2D field solver based on Method of Moments, which has been deisgner by convergence, comparisons, and measurements. The Simbeor SFS engine supports all modern board structures and 1, including the use of polygons on signal layers as reference layers. The routing impedance is determined by the width and height of the route, and the properties of the surrounding dielectric materials.

Based on the material properties defined in the Layer Stack Managerthe required routing widths are calculated when each impedance profile is created.

Depending on the material properties, ddsigner width may change as the routing layer is changed. This requirement to changes widths as you change routing layers is automatically managed by the applicable routing altium designer 17 draftsman free rule configured in the PCB Rules and Constraints Editor Design » Rules.

For most board designs, there will be a specific set of nets to be routed with a controlled impedance. A common approach frse to create a net class or differential pair class that includes these nets, then create a routing rule that targets this class, as shown in the images below. Normally you manually define the Min, Max and Preferred Widths, either in the upper constraint settings to apply them to all layers; or individually for each layer in the layer grid.

For controlled impedance routing you enable the Use Impedance Profile option instead, then select the required Impedance Profile from the dropdown. When this is done, the Constraints region of the rule will change.

The first thing you will notice is that the desugner layers region of the design rule will altium designer 17 draftsman free longer show all signal layers in the board, it will now only show the layers enabled in the selected Impedance Profile. The Preferred Width values and diff pair gap will update to reflect the widths and gaps calculated for each layer. For single-sided nets, the routing width is defined by the Routing Width design rule.

When you choose to Use an Impedance Profile, the available layers and Preferred Widths are controlled by the selected profile. The routing of differential pairs is altium designer 17 draftsman free by the Differential Pair Routing design rule. For a differential pair, the available layers, the Preferred Width and the Preferred Gap are controlled by the selected profile.

There is a great deal of debate about corners in high-speed signal routes. While it is agreed that the electrons will not fly off when they hit a degree corner, a traditional degree corner is wider across the corner diagonal, which источник change the impedance of the route. Rounded or degree corners drattsman preferred – both are standard features of the PCB editor’s interactive router – and if needed degree corners can be mitered using the Convert Selected Tracks to Chamfered Altuim command.

Note that this command converts the selected track segments into microsoft powerpoint 2016 free single region object. So how do you know what target impedance to select? This is normally driven by the characteristic source impedance of the logic family or technology being used. Remember, the lower the impedance the greater the current drain, the higher the impedance the more ddraftsman there will be EMI emitted, and the more susceptible that signal will be to crosstalk.

This is not exactly correct due to the coupling that occurs between the pair, which becomes stronger as they become closer, reducing the differential impedance altium designer 17 draftsman free the pair. Main article: Layer Eesigner Management. The materials used for the layers in your board, their dimensions, and the number of and order that the layers are tree, are all defined in the Layer Stack Manager.

Here you configure the various layers that are needed to fabricate the final board including the copper signal and plane layers, the dielectric layers that separate the copper, the продолжение здесь layers, and the component overlay.

All fabricated layers are defined in the Layer Stack Manager Stackup tab. Detailed information about the material properties that are entered in the Layer Stack Manager are included in the Layer Stack Table and also in the Layer Stack Legend placed in a Draftsman document.

You can also Save a layer stackup as a template in the Layer Stack Manager File menualtium designer 17 draftsman free Load that template into future designs. Main article: Defining the Via Types. As drfatsman in the overview section of this article, vias affect the impedance of the signal routing and are a key consideration in high-speed design. Adobe professional cs6 no free well as the length, hole diameter, and via land darftsman affecting the altium designer 17 draftsman free that the signal sees, any unused portion of a via barrel can act as a stub, contributing to altium designer 17 draftsman free reflections.

These via alitum are all supported in Altium Designer. Back drilling of unused via barrels is also supported, these are defined in the Layer Stack Manager’s Back Drills tab Learn more about configuring the board for back drilling.

All of the various types of vias that can be fabricated can be defined in the Via Types tab of the Layer Stack Manager. Summarizing this study and other references, the following guidelines are given to help minimize the impact altium designer 17 draftsman free vias:. The design of the vias is a key ingredient in the high-speed board design process. The possible layer-to-layer via connection options are dictated by the fabrication process chosen to achieve the layer stackup, which means you must choose the fabrication and drilling process as the via style designsr the layer stackup is being defined.

The feature supports back drilling from both sides of the board, and back drilled sites can drsigner easily examined in the PCB panel, with the board displayed in 3D mode. Read more about Controlled Depth Drilling. A good quality return path is essential for each high-speed signal in the design. Whenever the return path deviates and does not flow under the signal route, a loop is altium designer 17 draftsman free and this loop results in EMI being generated, with the amount being directly related to the area of the loop.

The first image is a plane layer split into 3v3 and 5v0 zones; the second image is a signal layer with a 3v3 polygon and a 5v0 polygon. Net colors have been assigned and highlighting aaltium. There is general agreement that a ground plane should not be split unless there is a specific requirement for it altium designer 17 draftsman free you understand how to define and dezigner it.

Instead, the components should be arranged to keep noisy components separate from quiet components, and to also cluster components by the supply rail that they use. To help with the task of visually checking the return paths, you can configure the display so you can more easily examine the return path under the critical route paths. Checking if signals travel over a split line as /70943.txt traverse different voltage areas on the plane.

The four highlighted nets cross a split in the VCC power plane, creating a split in the return path of those signals. Your net s will stand out, and any splits or dtaftsman that lie in the return path, such as split frer or blowouts created by through-hole pads and vias, will be resigner to see.

Xraftsman or necks in the return path can be detected by the Return Path altiim rule. The Return Path design rule checks for a continuous signal return path on the designated reference layer s above or below the signal s targeted by the rule. The return path can be created from нажмите чтобы увидеть больше, regions, and polygon pours placed on the reference signal layer, or it can be a plane layer. The return path layers are the reference layers defined in the Impedance Profile selected in the Return Altium designer 17 draftsman free design rule.

These layers are checked to ensure the specified Minimum Gap width beyond the signal edge exists along the signal’s path. Add altium designer 17 draftsman free designet Return Path design rule in the High Speed rule designef. The return path layers are defined in the selected Impedance Profilethe path width beyond the signal edge is defined by the Minimum Gap.

 
 

Print (Draftsman) | Altium Designer User Manual | Documentation

 
 

This has no bearing on the content of the folder – releasing a Draftsman Document Template or Draftsman Sheet Template will always result in a corresponding Draftsman Template Item. It simply provides a visual ‘clue’ as to what is stored in a folder and can be beneficial when browsing a vault for particular content.

To nominate a folder’s use as a container for Draftsman Template Items, set its Folder Type as Draftsman Templates , when defining the folder properties in the Edit Folder dialog. Specifying the folder type – its intended use – gives a visual indication of the content of that folder when browsing the vault!

Another important aspect of the parent folder is the Item Naming Scheme employed for it. This defines the format of the unique ID for each Item created in that particular folder. Using a default naming scheme, the software will automatically assign the next available unique ID, based on that scheme, having scanned the entire vault and identifiers of existing Items.

This can be a great time-saver when manually creating Draftsman Template Items prior to release. A custom scheme can also be defined for a folder, simply by typing it within the field, ensuring that the variable portion is enclosed in curly braces e. If you are creating these Items in a Draftsman Templates type folder, these Item types will be available from the right-click context menu when creating the Items.

When defining a Draftsman Template Item, be sure to specify the type of lifecycle management to be used for the Item, and the naming scheme employed for its revisions, respectively. Control over which Item types can use a particular lifecycle definition or revision naming scheme, can be defined and enabled at a global level from within the Content Types dialog , when defining each schema.

Specify the required schemes in the Item Properties dialog, using the Lifecycle Definition and Revision Naming Scheme fields respectively.

Releasing an actual defined template into a revision of such an item can be performed in a single streamlined way. Direct editing frees you from the shackles of separate version-controlled source data. You can simply edit a supported Item type using a temporary editor loaded with the latest source direct from the vault itself. And once editing is complete, the entity is released or re-released into a subsequent planned revision of its parent Item, and the temporary editor closed.

There are no files on your hard drive, no questioning whether you are working with the correct or latest source, and no having to maintain separate version control software. The Altium Vault handles it all, with the same great integrity you’ve come to expect, and in a manner that greatly expedites changes to your data. To do so, simply enable the option Open for editing after creation , at the bottom of the Create Item dialog which is enabled by default. The Item will be created and the temporary PcbDrawing Editor will open, presenting a.

DwfDot or. As a result, users often Read Article. Create and submit a short video that can showcase your past, current, or even an all-new creation designed using Altium for a chance to win prizes and be featured on the Altium Stories YouTube channel.

Gerber Compare in Altium ‘s Online Platform Gerber compare features are a very important part of a design review. You can learn more about Gerber file extensions in this article. There is a lot that goes into any project and it needs to be planned out early in order to prevent cost overruns.

Some designers looking for manufacturing services and component prices might be tempted to use an online calculator, but this is Read Article. Back to Home. Before saving, an alert dialog will detail the pending action if incompatible elements exist. PCBDwf is not deleted from the project folder on disk. A better approach is to use the Save Copy As option, which will save the new template to the nominated directory while leaving the source document and project contents intact.

Note that a saved Sheet Template can be applied to a Draftsman document page from its Sheet Properties dialog — select the dialog’s button to locate and load a specific Sheet Template. DwfDot from the save dialog’s Save as type selection filter. All of an existing drawing document’s content and attributes, with the exception to those that relate to data extracted from the PCB design, will be saved as a Document Template.

If the source drawing document has a specific page style as might be applied by a Sheet Template these graphical elements and attributes will be saved with the new Document Template. Any elements that are incompatible with the Document Template format will be removed. A multi-page Draftsman document might typically contain assembly drawings, drill tables and drawings, layer stack and BOM tables, and fabrication drawings.

When saved as a Document Template, the data from the current PCB is retained to define a drawing content ‘shell’. When subsequently used as a template for a new drawing document, the project’s current PCB data is loaded into the shell in place of the template PCB data, therefore, recreating the document format and its type of content.

Both Sheet and Document templates can be opened as free documents in Altium Designer and edited accordingly. DwfDot from the browser filter options. An open Document Template will include the PCB design data that applied when the template was created, and also the Sheet Template properties that were active when it was created.

If a Sheet Template defined the page properties in that Document template, it will need to be reapplied if the Sheet Template has changed in the interim. Note that the document options apply to the entire drawing document, however, the Sheet Properties settings apply to individual document sheets pages. The Draftsman Document properties apply to all pages of a drawing document.

The Draftsman Document Options dialog provides the following settings for the current Draftsman document:. The Altium Draftsman application allows a range of automated production drawings to be placed directly onto a Draftsman drawing document. The type of drawing to be placed is selected from the editor’s Drawing Views icon collection, or by selecting a drawing type from the main Place menu. When placed in the document, drawings can be manipulated within the page and their properties edited from a dedicated Draftsman Properties panel.

If not already open, the panel can be activated by double-clicking on a placed drawing view, by selecting the drawing view and choosing Properties from the right-click option menu, or by clicking on the button at the bottom of the work area. The panel automatically changes its mode and content to match the selected drawing view or object.

The panel provides editing access to the detailed properties of objects that have been placed in the drawing document. Select an object or view to see its properties in the panel.

A number of the panel sections groups of options are common to most of its view modes, as instigated by selecting drawing object. These are:. The location of the Title text for placed Views and Tables see below can be set to a range of positions around the object, or moved to any position by simply dragging the Title text itself.

For Views and Tables, the Title section in the Properties panel includes a Location drop down menu for selecting from a predefined set of Title positions. Manually position a Title in the workspace by dragging it to a new location. A placed board Assembly View can be moved, scaled and viewed from different sides. The view shows the board outline with cutouts, holes, and component graphics with additional notation. The component graphics are automatically generated and take data on a priority basis from several sources, such as:.

A component’s visibility, designator attributes and the geometry source options used for forming its graphics can be changed in the Component Display Properties dialog, which is opened from the Draftsman Properties panel see below. How individual components are displayed in an Assembly view is configured in the Component Display Properties dialog, which is available from the button in the Board Assembly View of the Properties panel.

Using the Show menu, the Component Display Properties dialog can be selected to display the component properties in different formats, with grouping choices of components, classes, footprints, and by BOM entry the Footprints grouping is selected in the example images. The dialog offers a Geometry tab view for configuring how components are drawn, and a Parameters tab to specify the component information that will be is shown.

The Component Display Properties dialog’s Geometry tab view allows control of the visibility and graphics for individual components, and includes the following options:. Configure the component graphics and annotations for the most suitable display of an Assembly view. To ease the task of locating and changing options for multiple entries, the Component Display Properties dialog also provides smart filtering capabilities, which can be activated from the icon in each column header.

Select the desired entry in the filter drop down list to constrain filter the dialog contents to components that match the selected attribute. Multiple filter options can be applied and then disabled or cleared using the filter entry checkboxes in the dialog’s lower border. Automated data filtering uses a specific text query to group component entries, or a full query approach for custom filtering as shown below.

To create a more advanced or compound filter constraint, select the Custom option from the filter drop down list. The Component Display Properties dialog’s Parameters tab view allows control of the visibility and positioning of both Designators and Custom Parameters for the named components. It includes the following options:. Select the Add Parameter button to add another set of Parameter columns in the dialog — Parameter 2. In the example Parameter addition shown in the image above, a custom component Parameter named Internal Component Ref has been added, and its Location and Font specified.

The component’s Designator has been set to a larger font and positioned at the center of the the component graphic. Draftsman also includes direct, manual component Designator control and positioning. This adds to the capabilities available in the Component Display Properties feature by providing direct control through the Properties panel of the positioning, sizing and style for individual designators, or designators on a BOM item basis.

Also, designators may be manually positioned in the drawing space by a simple drag and drop process. The immediate control of designators is accessed from the Component Display Properties section in the Properties panel, which is enabled when a component or its designator is selected in a placed Assembly view. To change the properties for all components of that type, check the Apply changes to all instances of same BOM option.

For example, to modify the display properties for all 0. This is equivalent to locating and changing the properties of the BOM entry in the Component Display Properties dialog. For direct free-form placement of a component dialog, simply press Ctrl while selecting the designator in the workspace and then drag it to a new location.

Note that its Designator Location setting in the Properties panel will change to Manual. Draftsman Fabrication views can be displayed from either side or flipped and be rendered with solid or outlined copper fills. With the placed fabrication graphic selected in the editor, the Board Fabrication View mode in the Properties panel offers the following settings:.

A placed Drill Drawing can be displayed from either show holes for specific drill pairs if available and rendered with defined hole group symbols. With a placed Drill Drawing graphic selected in the editor, the Drill Drawing View mode in the Properties panel offers the standard drawing view settings, such as Position, Title and View.

The panel mode’s additional properties settings are:. The Drill Symbol Configurations dialog presents a tabular view of PCB hole data, with hole styles grouped on a selectable parameter column data basis and assigned standard symbols. The dialog is activated by the button in the Properties panel, when in Drill Drawing View mode as above. Set hole symbol graphics for specified groups of hole types based on their attributes. The dialog’s hole data table provides a flexible approach to assigning holes styles to Drill Drawing symbols, along with setting the symbol display graphics and sizes.

By using the selectable hole parameters offered by the Grouping drop-down menu, the chosen criteria will group hole types under one symbol. For example, in the above image the criteria is configured to group holes by Size, Plated status, and Tolerance, so all holes that have these parameter values in common are collected under the one drill symbol.

By contrast, if the grouping criteria was set to ‘Drill Layer Pair’, all holes would be grouped under one symbol — since for this PCB, the parameter value applies to all holes only one Drill Layer Pair is used in the PCB design.

The supported symbols include a range of graphic shapes and letter characters. The Draftsman document Detail View feature allows a defined area of a drawing to be brought out to a floating, magnified view of its detail. The magnification factor scale , labeling and line attributes of the detailed view can be configured in the Board Detail View mode of the Properties panel. The placement procedure is as follows:. The section view generator takes the available 3D data from the current PCB to create a standalone section drawing that is aligned to the nominated cut point.

Any number of Section Views can be created from an Assembly View, and the section parameters may be modified after they are placed. The steps to create Section B-B shown in the following image would be:. After a Section View has been placed, it can be dragged to a new location, or its associated cut line moved to a different position on the Assembly View. To do the latter, select the Section View and then drag its cut line to a new position on the Assembly View — the Section View graphics will update accordingly.

The Board Section View mode in the Properties panel provides additional options for a selected Section View, such as its scale, label, style, and orientation. The properties and options for a placed Isometric View are edited from the Properties panel, which will change to its Board Isometric View mode when the view graphic is selected in the workspace.

Use the panel’s View — Face Side drop down menu to select the projection view perspective, and the Variants menu to specify which project design variation if available is shown. In the above images drawing document and Properties panel , the placed Front side view is set to the SL1 Supply option 1 Variant, which has one of the voltage regulator devices marked as ‘not fitted’. If the Properties panel is not already open, it can be activated by double-clicking on a placed drawing view, by selecting the drawing view and choosing Properties from the right-click option menu, or by clicking on the button at the bottom of the work area.

A Draftsman document’s Layer Stack Legend view provides a representation of the board’s internal structure as an enlarged sectional view. It includes detailed descriptions and information for each layer in the stack, including the Gerber files associated with each layer. By default, the information for each layer is derived from the corresponding attributes in the Board Layer Stack, as defined in the Layer Stack Manager dialog Design » Layer Stack Manager in the board editor , however the layer description attributes may be edited and expanded through the Layer Stack Legend mode of the Properties panel.

A placed Layer Stack Legend derives data from the Layer Stack for the nominated PCB, and can be displayed with relative layer thickness and drill pairs. To configure how data is displayed in a Layer Stack view, access the Properties panel’s Layer Stack Legend mode by double clicking on the placed view or selecting Properties from its right click options.

The panel mode provides a comprehensive range of grouped attribute settings that allow for detailed fine tuning of a placed Layer Stack Legend view. The Layer Information dialog allows a large degree of control over the layer information displayed in the Layer Stack Legend view table. To open the dialog click the button under Settings in the Properties panel’s Layer Stack Legend mode.

Note that the Layer Stack display and information options define the structure and content of the Layer Stack Legend view that has been placed on a drawing document and do not affect the Board Layer Stack configuration that is defined in the PCB Editor.

Controlled Depth Drilling Backdrilling in Altium Designer is a methodology for detecting and removing electrically redundant sections of plated through holes. In the backdrilling technique, the stubs are removed by drilling to a precise Z depth with a slightly oversized drill. In a Draftsman document this arrangement is represented in the Layer Stack Legend, which now includes a graphical representation of all Drill Pairs defined for the board, including any Back Drill Pairs shown with partially drilled out Via barrels.