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This TechWatch is based on the second section of my "I didn't know you could do that in Altium Designer 6" presentation at our user conference on the 31st October 2006. This section covers hints tips and tricks within the Altium Designer Schematic Environment, following sections will include the PCB and Library environments.  Previous sections, Part 1 & 2 covered the Altium Designer Environment.

Each section is divided into parts, in Part 4 I will cover the hints and tips shown for Copying and Cloning under the Design Capture Environment section.

The Design Capture Environment

Within the Altium Designer Schematic Environment we looked at hints and tips for Schematic Editing and Copying and Cloning Objects.  Under Schematic Editing we looked at wire manipulation, formatting and the compile mask, see Part 3.  With Copying and Cloning Objects we explored the many different ways of copying objects including the use of the Smart Paste.

Copying and Cloning Objects

Shift and Drag

In AD6 if you wish to copy an object on your schematic you can do so by holding down the Shift key and the Left Mouse Button click and Drag the object you wish to copy. You will find a new object is at your cursor, with the same attributes as the one you selected, ready to place. If the object is a component or text string, which contains numerical values, they will also be incremented for you. 

Insert to clone

Another method for cloning objects is to use the Insert key. With and object at your cursor, like a component or Net Label, hover this object over another object on your schematic.  If you hover a component over another component on the schematic, even if its a completely different part, and press the Insert key the component at your cursor will change to match the one on your schematic precisely.  

If the object at your cursor is an object which uses a text string such as a Net Label, Port or Power Port you can hover the object over another object which contains a text string and "steal" its text.  For example with a Net Label at your cursor, hovering the mouse over a port with the name A[0..7] and pressing the Insert key will copy the text to your Net Label.  

Smart Paste 

The Smart Paste is a very powerful tool which allows us to convert objects copied to the schematic or windows clipboard into other objects. For example a bus port A[0..7] can be copied and then smart paste used to convert it into expanded Wires and Net Labels (A0, A1... etc).

The Smart Paste tool can also be used to create a paste array of your copied objects into columns and rows and increment text.

For an excellent demo on the Smart Paste features take a look at this demo video from Altium. Smart Paste

Copying and pasting information onto schematic

With AD6 we have the ability to copy and paste information from external sources such as Excel or PDF, or internal panels or dialog boxes such as the List panel and BOM dialog box on to our schematic sheets.  

This Altium demo video illustrates this feature Adding Reports Directly on Schematic sheets

Go to Part 5 or back to Part 1.