The PCB Design Professionals

Short-cut Keys – 03

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).
• SU – select touching rectangle. (draw a rectangle and every thing touching that rectangle 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