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Parent page: Pre-layout Stage. There are two rigid-flex design modes available in Altium’s PCB design software. The original, or standard mode, referred to as Rigid-Flex, supports simple rigid-flex designs. If your design has more complex rigid-flex requirements, such as overlapping flex regions, then you need the Advanced Rigid-Flex mode also known as rigid-flex 2. The mode is chosen in Tools menu in the Layer Stack Manager. The Board Shape defines the overall shape of the finished board.
Click through the slides to see the three Board Regions that make up the rigid-flex shape, and the finished board in 3D. The Board Shape, also referred to as the board outline, is a closed polygonal shape that defines the overall extents of the board. Tthe Board Shape is used by the software for:. The Board Shape is created from one or more Board Regions. For designers working on a single-region board design, the following commands can be used to define the Board Shape:.
The difference between the Define Board Shape from Selected Objects command and the Create Board Region from Selected Objects command is that the first command replaces all existing Board Regions with the new region that is created when the command is run, whereas the second command creates an additional Board Region, without removing any existing Board Region s.
The video demonstrates creating the Board Shape from selected objects and then placing Split Lines to create the three regions needed. The video first demonstrates creating the Board Shape from selected objects and then slicing the shape to create the three regions needed. Then it shows an alternate approach, where the three Board Regions are defined from selected objects. Note that these demonstrations are using Rigid-Flex 2.
The next step is to import the board’s shape as a. DXF or. DWG file. Note that the shape to be imported must be a closed shape and internal cutouts are not automatically created but can be defined later from imported objects. The software will attempt to find the shape based on the centerline of the selected objects.
It will offer to use a tracing algorithm instead. Only choose this option if your design can accept the impact of this difference. This feature redefines the board shape based on a surface face of an imported 3D model. It can be used to quickly create a complex board shape and helps integration between electronic and mechanical design areas.
You will also be prompted to update the shape, which helps if the shape is still under development and updates are expected. Only surfaces aligned with the X-Y plane can be used to create the board shape. If you select a model surface that requires alignment in the X-Y plane, you will be asked in a Confirmation dialog to align the surface before you can continue. This dialog also allows you to place the model using the selected face in relation to either the top or bottom surface of the board.
This means that the vertical position of the model can also be set at the same time. After the board shape has been redefined, you will be given the option to hide the 3D body. Use this command when the Board Shape exists but there are currently no objects along the boundary. Situations where this command can be useful include:. A board cutout can be placed anywhere in the Board Shape.
Note that the cutout is actually a Region object configured to be a negative object. A Board Cutout has been placed on the Board Shape. If the board cutout is an unusual shape, such as a circle, it can be easier to create an outline of the cutout shape using tracks and arcs for example, Place » Arc » Full Circle , select the shape, and then convert it to a Board Cutout Tools » Convert » Create Board Cutout from Selected Primitives.
Polygons that overlay a solid region board cutout will pour as close to the edge of the cutout as allowed by the applicable Clearance design rule. A specific Clearance design rule can be created if required, which could, for example, be scoped to apply between IsBoardCutoutRegion and InPolygon. A common approach used to cut the finished board from the fabrication panel is to mill or route the board out of the panel.
Board cutouts can also be routed out. This can be done manually or automatically by the software. A Board Cutout in the first image, with a Route Tool path defined in the second image.
As well as the Board Shape, you also should define a placement and routing boundary around the edge of the board. Alternatively, this can be done manually by placing objects on the keepout layer. Objects placed on this layer define a no-crossing-allowed boundary for components and routing. Typically you want objects such as components and routing to be a certain distance from the edge of the board; this distance can be controlled by setting the applicable routing and component placement design rules.
You can also define other routing and component keepout areas for mechanical objects, such as screw heads or other mounting requirements. A keepout boundary defined by placing standard line objects on the keepout purple layer. Defining the Board Shape in Altium Designer.
Using Altium Documentation. The default Board Shape in a new PCB document is a rectangular shape 6 inch x 4 inch, or mil x mil, or For specific project templates that can be used when creating a new PCB project, the associated PCB document in each case has a specific Board Shape according to the form factor of the board.
The current viewing mode for the PCB document can be changed using the corresponding commands from the main View menu. Alternatively, change views quickly using the 1 Board Planning Mode , 2 2D and 3 3D keyboard shortcuts. Learn more about placing and editing a Board Region. There are also a number of commands for working with Board Regions, learn more about the commands for converting between drawing primitives and board definition objects.
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Another important aspect of the parent folder is the Item Naming Scheme employed for it. Contact Us Contact our corporate or local offices directly. Note when the Generic 3D Model option is chosen, the 3D Body object simply acts as a container for it, and designet is automatically re-sized to enclose the chosen model.
Altium Designer PCB Library – FREE – Footprints – Symbols – 3D Models
Available shortcuts also are listed in the various panels; look for the shortcut key strokes displayed next to the controls in the panel. Altium Designer Documentation. Using Altium Documentation. The Altium Designer documentation is versioned. You can switch to a particular version’s documentation set manually, directly through your web browser, or you can sit back and access the correct version automatically from within Altium Designer.
F1 mapping functionality and other documentation links are instilled that allow you to arrive at the correct documentation destination for the version of the software in which you are actively designing.
Coming from a different design tool? Not a problem. Scoot on over to the area of the documentation that looks at Interfacing to Other Design Tools. Read about Installing and Extending Altium Designer. Read about Getting Altium Designer Licensed.
Read about Altium Design Environment. Read more Designing with a Connected Workspace. Key Benefits of an Altium Workspace. Some of the key benefits that Altium brings to the design table: Securely share PCB designs with internal and external stakeholders with a web link with which they can view and comment on the design via a web browser on any platform Mac, Windows, Android, or iOS and any device desktop or mobile.
Communicate true design intent early and collaboratively through commenting, co-creation, and visualization of PCB designs. Work from anywhere and connect with anyone with ease. Built-in storage and version control tightly integrated with Altium Designer ensures that the latest data is available at any time from any device.
Conduct more effective design reviews by allowing users to highlight and mark up a specific component or area on a schematic or layout. Collaborate with multiple designers. The web browser platform simplifies how designs are visualized and marked up while allowing other designers to connect to the same PCB design with Altium Designer to author changes. Co-design with mechanical designers.
Electrical and mechanical engineers can push and pull design data backward and forward in real-time with each being notified when changes have been made by the other. Altium provides native integration between electronic and mechanical domains through a built-in co-designer capability that provides native integration with a variety of MCAD software tools.
Only surfaces aligned with the X-Y plane can be used to create the board shape. If you select a model surface that requires alignment in the X-Y plane, you will be asked in a Confirmation dialog to align the surface before you can continue. This dialog also allows you to place the model using the selected face in relation to either the top or bottom surface of the board.
This means that the vertical position of the model can also be set at the same time. After the board shape has been redefined, you will be given the option to hide the 3D body. Use this command when the Board Shape exists but there are currently no objects along the boundary.
Situations where this command can be useful include:. A board cutout can be placed anywhere in the Board Shape. Note that the cutout is actually a Region object configured to be a negative object. A Board Cutout has been placed on the Board Shape. If the board cutout is an unusual shape, such as a circle, it can be easier to create an outline of the cutout shape using tracks and arcs for example, Place » Arc » Full Circle , select the shape, and then convert it to a Board Cutout Tools » Convert » Create Board Cutout from Selected Primitives.
Polygons that overlay a solid region board cutout will pour as close to the edge of the cutout as allowed by the applicable Clearance design rule. A specific Clearance design rule can be created if required, which could, for example, be scoped to apply between IsBoardCutoutRegion and InPolygon.
A common approach used to cut the finished board from the fabrication panel is to mill or route the board out of the panel. Board cutouts can also be routed out. This can be done manually or automatically by the software.
And by designing only with elements from the Workspace, the integrity of those designs is inherently assured. One of the most powerful aspects of the Altium infrastructure platform is the support for collaboration on a global scale.
At the heart of this is the platform’s support for Global Sharing. With Altium you can effortlessly share your current design progress with management, or purchasing, or a potential manufacturer, in a way that is also easy for them – simplified, interactive collaboration, from any device.
Data can be shared with anyone, anywhere in the world. What you share, and with whom, is down to you and could include:. Most electronic products that are designed are fixed to some kind of mechanical structure – either a chassis, or an enclosure.
And while you could get a 3D model exported from Altium Designer, it is a manual process that needs conscious decision and action to do so. In reality, this is performed very infrequently, with the result being that the MCAD designer is never quite sure if what they’ve got is the latest and greatest. No more polling for updates and no more uncertainty. Data is pushed between domains as the design evolves, ensuring design coherence.
The cloud-based Altium infrastructure platform, as it stands today, offers a pretty impressive range of software-based services for collaboration across disciplines.
No installation or configuration, no manually updating to a new ‘server release’, browser-based, mobile-ready, and no extra processes to learn. But the experience doesn’t stop there. Depending on your product-relationship with Altium and the features available to you through Altium , you not only benefit from future updates to existing services and capabilities delivered through the platform, but also services and capabilities that have yet to appear.
Altium will continue to grow and mature, and always with the focus on facilitating frictionless collaboration between all of the stakeholders involved in getting your next innovative product out-the-door, on time, first time. This feature gives you the option to automatically assign simulation models to components without models. To use this feature, click Assign Automatically in the Components without Models region under the Verification stage in the Simulation Dashboard panel.
The search will be sequentially performed in the following sources:. The models found will be assigned to the components, with pins automatically mapped between the component and simulation model. The results of the auto-assignment are displayed in the Simulation Dashboard panel. If the simulation model cannot be correctly mapped to the component, this component will be listed under the Components with Partly Assigned Models entry in the Simulation Dashboard panel.
You can click the Edit Model link for the component to open the Sim Model dialog and edit the pin mapping. In this release, you can now quickly access the most popular simulation generic components resistor, capacitor, transistors, etc.
This feature allows for the custom naming of multi-functional pins. Use the new Functions field of the Pin mode of the Properties panel in a schematic library document to enter the desired custom name. After clicking Enter , the custom alternate name will display below the field as shown in the image below. All Font Settings for the custom name are the same as the original pin name. In the Component mode of the Properties panel in a schematic document, the custom names are displayed on the Pins tab.
Custom pin names can also be defined when creating a schematic symbol using the Symbol Wizard. Example of a pin name with slash characters in the Symbol Wizard. Hover the cursor over the image to see the properties of the generated symbol’s pin. Display of pin names on schematic symbols can be managed by clicking on the name of a pin with custom names defined.
In the pop-up window that opens, check the function names you would like to display on the schematic symbol.
If no custom pin name is selected in the list, the default name will be shown. Example of a pop-up menu for a pin with custom pin names.
Hover the cursor over the image to see this pin after selecting some custom names. Therefore, the Unsupported multi-channel alternate item check is removed from the Error Reporting tab of the Project Options dialog. Component designators and net names in text frames that are placed on the schematic function as links and provide cross-probing capabilities within the schematic and printed PDFs. Use the Properties region of the Text Frame mode of the Properties panel to define the link by using ‘ ‘ in the Text field to access a list of possible choices.
Select the desired primitive to search for; the text frame now includes a link as shown in the second image below. Any schematic design object that is placed outside of the schematic sheet boundaries can now be selected and moved. When an object is selected, the same set of operations and commands can be performed as for an object within the schematic sheet boundaries.
To provide you with a quick view of the current PCB design’s parameters, a new Parameters tab for the Board mode of the Properties panel has been added.
The tab lists both system parameters e. The parameter listing can be narrowed down using the filter buttons at the top of the panel.
A parameter can be quickly placed as a special string using the Place button at the bottom of the list when the parameter is selected in the panel. The Parameters tab for the Board mode of the Properties panel provides you with comprehensive parametric information on your PCB design. Features for comparing locally saved schematic documents with a commit or release of the Altium Workspace project for which these documents are constituent parts have been implemented.
After selecting a command, the comparison results will be presented in a new tab of your default web browser. An example of schematic comparison results. In this release, a new Design Reuse mode of the Properties panel has been implemented.
When a selected schematic or PCB component is part of a reuse block placed in the design, this mode can be accessed by clicking the Reuse Block link provided in the Component mode of the panel. The properties of the component’s parent reuse block will be presented in the panel.
To return to the properties of the initially selected component, use the Component link. Access the reuse block properties from a component that is a part of this reuse block. The images above display accessing the properties from a schematic component. Hover the cursor over the image to see access from a PCB component. General tasks tasks applied to the current project but are not associated with a project comment or document are now shown in the Comments and Tasks panel.
These tasks are listed in the panel in a separate group under the entry of the project. For general tasks, the same content and attributes are shown in the panel as for regular tasks assignee, priority, etc.
General tasks are now listed in the Comments and Tasks panel. Each example demonstrates a real-world use case of simulation, complete with information on setting up the simulator and interpreting the results. In the Sim Data Editor, the Y-axis for simulation results can now be presented in logarithmic form in the same way that was previously possible for the X-axis. Use the Y Axis Setting dialog to configure the Y-axis to be presented in logarithmic form. The following features have been taken out of Open Beta and have transitioned to Public in this release:.
When this and the Jump to Results options are enabled, all found elements will be zoomed while other elements are dimmed according to the settings on the System — Navigation page of the Preferences dialog. To give you more flexibility, differential pairs can now be defined using custom suffixes in the Diff Pairs region of the Project Options – Options dialog. Custom suffixes cannot be added if only one suffix of the pair is defined or if any of the suffixes are used in another pair of custom suffixes.
The final goal of each PCB design is to get a correct and reliable set of assembly and fabrication outputs, and one purpose of any design tool is to provide a user with tools to find and resolve the issues that could arise during the design process before the design goes to production.
For example, PCB components could have degrees rotation value in previous versions of Altium Designer, but this situation is not allowed anymore in the current versions — the software will set such components to 0 degrees.
To help you in detecting and resolving such issues, and some other issues that can arise under certain conditions, the concept of PCB Health Checks has been introduced. These checks allow you to discover common issues in the PCB design, fix them, and avoid potential problems during the next stages of the design and manufacturing process.
The list of available PCB Health checks will grow up moving forward. The Board mode of the Properties panel available when no object is selected in the active PCB document has the new Health Check tab that enables you to configure, perform, and explore the results of the PCB Health Check. Recommendations for fixing the issues of a specific type can also be found on this tab of the panel. The new Health Check tab of the Properties panel is in the Board mode. This button allows you to control visibility for the board shapes of the PCBs that are constituents of the selected board array.
Use the Board Shape button to control the visibility of the board shape. Hover the cursor over the image to see the difference between the enabled and disabled states. The Print dialog has been enhanced to streamline the configuration of the pages to be printed from a PCB design. Some options have been relocated and updated from bullets to highlighted boxes in order to improve the readability for our users.
The Pages tab now includes Printout Properties options for the display of surface mounts, through-holes, and design views, as well as a Displayed Layers region to configure specific layers. All copper layer objects with a net assignment of No Net will be checked.
To run the check, click Tools » Design Rule Check. The value field of this option applies to the plane. All other objects are checked regardless of size. This option is enabled by default. Version control status icons provided in the Projects panel for documents are now active controls that can be clicked to receive more information on the VCS status of the document and access options to perform the relevant actions.
For example, clicking the icon for a document that has locally-saved changes but that have not yet been sent to the Workspace shows the date and time when local changes have been saved, as well as options to save the project changes to the Workspace or revert local modifications of the document. Click a VCS status icon in the Projects panel to show more information on the document status and access-related actions.
The converted design project, which will retain the previous history of VCS commits, can then benefit from the Workspace’s native VCS-enabled features, such as advanced project sharing, single authentication, and the event-based History timeline. The New Library dialog has been introduced to facilitate the creation of a new library.
The dialog is accessed by choosing File » New » Library from the main menus. It provides the flow to create a new Workspace library component, component template, footprint, or symbol, or for creating an older generation library file-based or database type library. The Name , Description , and Path of a local snippet can now be edited through the Snippet Properties dialog that is accessed from the Design Reuse panel by clicking within the local snippet’s tile or right-clicking anywhere on the tile then selecting the Edit Properties command from the menu.
Edit properties of a local snippet using the Snippet Properties dialog accessed from the Design Reuse panel. When viewing variants on a compiled tab of a schematic document, alternate part properties are now displayed in the Properties panel, rather than the original component properties that were displayed in previous versions. The alternate part properties are read-only.
An alternate part is defined for a component on the schematic sheet. When a compiled tab is selected, the Properties panel will show the properties of the component for the current variant.
The ability to reuse design content not only saves time but also means that a set of proven circuitry blocks can be created, which helps reduce component inventory and frees up your design team to focus on the development of new concepts and products. To extend the existing concept of design snippets, new Reuse Blocks have been implemented in this release. When connected to your Altium Workspace, the new content of the Reuse Block type can be created, used, and managed, as well as Workspace-based schematic and PCB snippets.
The new Design Reuse panel provides access to reuse blocks and both Workspace-based and local snippets. The Design Reuse panel. A reuse block can contain both schematic circuitry and its physical representation for the PCB. When such a reuse block is placed on a schematic sheet, its physical representation will be placed automatically during the ECO process. This feature is in Open Beta and available when the UI. DesignReuse option is enabled in the Advanced Settings dialog.
The Gerber Setup and Gerber X2 Setup dialogs have been replaced by the dialogs with specific options to suit each Gerber format. The new dialogs include two output naming options using either the PCB filename with a unique extension or a unique filename with a common extension.
When Gerber or Gerber X2 output is generated for a PCB panel an embedded board array , the new dialog includes a column for the panel as well as a column of layers for each board included in the panel. Use this new column to quickly verify that the various board layers are mapped to the correct panel layers.