The PCB Design Professionals

Find Similar

Find similar is another really handy tool for making global edits to primitives. All you have to do is “Right Click” on the object you would like to find more of or edit and choose “Find Similar” from the pop up menu. Alternately you can go to “Edit” then “Find Similar” or press “E” then  “N” or “SHIFT+F”. You will then be presented with a dialogue box as pictured.

From here you can tighten your parameters and make sure you select just the thing you are after. Also at the bottom there are option for how your results will be viewed and also has a run inspector check box which if checked will pop up the PCB Inspector window so you can make your edits straight away.

If you have any questions or you would like us to do a tips and tricks on a specific topic, post a comment or email us at blog@blackstick.co.uk

Rules – 05

Design -> Rules (D R)

The design rules in Altium are very powerful and it would take us an age to type an in depth blog on the rules. So here are a few of the one’s we use.

Polygon Rules

You have to keep an eye on polygon rules  if you use the query helper and select polygon from the object types checks, then the syntax would be ‘ispoly’ we have found that this doesn’t work, instead you can use the syntax ‘inpoly’ to set up rules for clearance checks or direct connects to polygons.

Unused BGA pins Rule

If you have a BGA with unused pins that you still want to fanout to a via. You will get short circuit error between the ‘no net’ pad and ‘no net’ via and track. There is away around that though, you can add another short circuit rule to be as pictured. This should fix those ‘no net’ errors and stop any other short circuits.

Tenting Via’s

Tenting via’s is a neat  little rule and pretty simple too. The rule is under the Mask heading, then Solder Mask Expansion. The syntax for a via is ‘isvia’, the rule is structured as pictured. Just make sure the expansion value is set to at least the minus of your via pad size. (eg. if your via has a 24thou pad then your expansion rule should be -12thou).

Clearance area’s

If you want to set up a specific area on a board to have a smaller clearances than the rest of the board (say for a fine pitch BGA) but you don’t want to extend this clearance over the whole board.  You can use a room  that has been pulled in from the schematic or create a new one from scratch. You can then create a rule similar to the one pictured.

If you would like us to list a rule that’s giving you trouble let us know – blog@blackstick.co.uk

Convert – 04

The convert command is great for creating unusual shaped copper pours or board cut-outs. It is located under the Tools Menu, Tools → Convert or type T then V. for short. I’ll put the short cut keys in brackets from now on.

Say you wanted to create a circular board cut-out you could use.

- Design → Board Shape → Define Board Cut-out (D S C) It’s is hard to draw a circle of an exact size and shape.

Instead draw a circle using Place → Full Circle (P U) which allows you to define a circle with an exact radius.

To make this a board cut-out (you guessed it). You can use the convert tool, Tools → Convert → Create Cut-out From Selected Primitives (T V B).

Similarly you can do this  for a complicated copper pour area or even convert to a region to make a keep out area on any layer.

The convert tool really comes into it’s own when working along side a mechanical engineer, you can import mechanical drawings lets say for example a metal can that touches the board in several places. You can convert this drawing into a keep out and banish tracks components and via’s in that area forever.

If you have any questions or you would like us to do a tips and tricks on a specific topic, post a comment or email us at blog@blackstick.co.uk

Short-cut Keys

Learning the short-cut keys is one of the ways to get the best out of Altium Designer.

If you look at the menu bar along the top the menus have an underlined letter (File for example). You do not have to move the mouse all the way to the top right just press “F” when the design area is active and up pops the file menu.  Similarly most of the options within here have underlines to.  So if you wanted to open up an new file all you have to type is “F O”.  Here is a list of some of the one’s we use day to day.

Measuring

• R M – report measure (allows you to measure the distance between two points.) you can also use CTRL+M.
• R P – report measure primitives (allows you to get an edge to edge measurement of most design items).

Place

• P V – place via.
• P T – place track.
• P M – place multiple traces (allows routing of multiple traces i.e busses).
• P F – place differential pair.
• T O R – tools → options → room (allows you to place selected components in a room).
• T O L – tools → options → rectangle(draw a boxed area and components will be placed inside).

Selections

• S L – select touching line  (draw a line and every thing touching that line will be selected).
• S I – select inside  (draw a box and everything completely encompassed in the box will be selected).
• S O – select outside  (draw a box and everything outside the box will be selected).

Aligning

• A L – align left.
• A R – align right.
• A C – align horizontal center.
• A V – align vertical center.
• A T – align top.
• A B – align bottom.

Origin

• E O S – edit origin set.
• E O R – edit origin reset.

Layers

• L – brings up layer tab in view configuration.
• CTRL+D – brings up”show/hide” tab in view configuration.
• SHIFT+S – toggle between single layer mode. (Hide, Gray Scale, or Monochrome other layers).

Nets

• N – brings up “show/hide connections” options for hiding net lines and of course making them visible again.

There are lots of short-cut keys in Altium and they are extremely useful once you get to know a few. Hope this helps.

If you would like us to do a tips and tricks on a specific topic post a comment or email us at – blog@blackstick.co.uk

Moving components

Do you have a component on your cursor and don’t know what to do with it? Hopefully this post will help.

There are two ways to move a part in Altium you can either click on the component and then drag it, or click the component and click the move selected objects button (which allows you to move the parts by a specific point).

Schematic & PCB

• Arrow Keys – Moves cursor 1 grid.

• Shift + Arrow Keys – Move cursor 10x grid.

• Spacebar – rotates components clockwise.

• Shift+Spacebar – rotates components anticlockwise.

• X – flips components on the X axis.

• Y – rotated components on the Y axis.

• TAB – bring up all the component information.

Just PCB

• L – toggles the layer that the component is on (top side/bottom side).

• CTRL+G allows you to change the placement grid for the component you have attached to your cursor.

• CTRL+D snaps components to the placement grid.

• TAB – Then change the x/y co-ordinates to where you would like the component to be.

***Warning do not use X or Y when placing a component in PCB Editor or your component footprint will be mirrored***

If you would like us to do a tips and tricks on a specific topic, post a comment or email us at – blog@blackstick.co.uk

We’d like to say a big thanks to everybody that dropped by our stand at Technology World 09.

The entire two days were nonstop for us. We would like to congratulate the Technology World team for a very professional set up and extremely useful format. By pre-booking appointments with people and having people book appointments with us there was no time wasted at all.

If you attended or exhibited we’d love to hear what you thought, post a comment or email us at – blog@blackstick.co.uk

Altium Environment

Design Space Layout

Design space layout in Altium are completely customisable you can move the majority of the windows where you would like them to be. There are some defaults set so if you misplace a window then View —> Desktop Layouts is your friend.

Zooming

• Hold the middle mouse button and move the mouse forward and back.

• CTRL+ scroll wheel.

• CTRL+ hold down right mouse button.

• Page Up – zoom in.

• Page Down -zoom out.

• Right Click then Left Click then move in and out.

Moving

• Hold the right mouse button to grab the screen

• Mouse scroll wheel pan up and down

• Mouse scroll wheel + shift pan left to right

• Auto pan is also good and happens while performing and action for example placing a component (holding shift speeds up the auto pan).

PCB/Schematic inspector

These are great tools for editing multiple parameters of multiple items at the same time. To make them appear on your side bar go to the bottom right of your window and click either PCB or SCH then click either PCB / SCH Inspector. Alternately you can go to View —> Workspace panels then SCH/PCB inspector. Then all you need to do is select a few things and edit away.

Help everything is greyed out.

If everything in your design space has turned grey you have probably applied a filter hit the clear button in the bottom right and all should return to normal.

If you would like us to do a tips and tricks on a specific topic, post a comment or email us at – blog@blackstick.co.uk

We have added this Blog to our website as a way to engage the design community into discussions on PCB Design and the challenges we need to overcome to get to a design that is better than fit for purpose.

We have added three categories to the blog:

Black Stick – For all things Black Stick: Things such as shows that we are attending, Our C4 calculator updates, Qualifications & Accreditation’s, among other things.

Altium News and Tips – Where we will be providing information, hints and tips about Altium Designer.  We hope that this will help beginner and moderate user to make the most out of Altium.

Guest Blogger Page – We will be inviting guest bloggers to write a piece on what they feel is relevant to PCB Design or the electronics industry and hope that this will become an area to discuss the hot topics of design.

If you would like to be a guest blogger or for any other comments please contact us at blog@blackstick.co.uk