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This TechWatch is based on the third 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 Board Level Environment, following sections will include the Library environments.  Previous sections, Part 1 & 2 covered the Altium Designer Environment and Parts 3 and 4 covered the Altium Designer Schematic Environment.

Each section is divided into parts, in Part 6 I will cover the hints and tips shown for Board Insight Display and Cross Editor Navigation/Selection under the Board Level Environment section.

The Board Level Environment

Within the Altium Designer Board Level Environment we looked at hints and tips for PCB  Editing and Selection, Board Insight Display and Cross Editor Navigation/Selection.  Under PCB Editing and Selection we looked at the New Selection Tools, Routing Track and Via Sizes, and Fanout of BGA's, see Part 5.  With Board Insight Display and Cross Editor Navigation/Selection we explored the many different ways of displaying and interrogating information on the PCB and cross probing between the Schematic and PCB editors.

Board Insight Display

Single Layer Mode

Single Layer mode has been in the Protel/Altium Designer for many years but it seems to be a little known feature and now with a few enhancements to AD6 it can be a very powerful tool, particularly with high density multi layered boards.  In previous versions Single Layer mode would hide all the other layers when turned on. In AD6 we can also have the option to view the other layers as Grey Scale to Monochrome.  These options can be found under Tools » Preferences » PCB Editor » Board Insight Display. Single layer mode can also be toggled using the short cut Shift + S.

Here is a good demo video from Altium illustrating the Single Layer mode and also enhancements to the display of Pad, Via and Track text information such as nets. Board Insight

Layer Sets

PCB Layer Sets are a new feature, added to Altium Designer 6, which allow you to toggle your workspace to display different sets of layers.
By default there are 5 layer sets defined to allow you to view All Layers, Signal Layers, Plane Layers, Non Signal Layers or Mechanical Layers. For more information on using and creating your own Layer Set, with Short Cut keys see my previous TechWatch Using and Creating PCB Layer Sets or Altium has a video demo which can be found here Layer Sets

HUD 

The Heads up display (HUD) can provide you with very useful information about your board and indeed help with tasks such as placement and routing.  While your mouse is moving in PCB you will, by default, have the HUD following your cursor providing information such as X,Y co-ordinates, Layer and grids.  It also shows a Delta X,Y which can be very handy when placing or moving objects, the dX,dY resets when you left click the mouse or when you press the Insert key.

Whist in a command such as Interactive Routing the HUD will give you information on  your current routing mode, length and width etc.  With Differential Pair routing it will also give you the length of each net and the current allowed difference between them.

When hovering your mouse over objects on your board you can get a plethora of information such as Components, Nets including nodes and length, DRC violations and right down to listing all of the primitives directly under your cursor.  So at a glance you can see exactly what you are looking at even on a dense board.

All of the information on the HUD is customisable as is the colour, fonts, transparency etc under Tools » Preferences » PCB Editor » Board Insight Modes. 

A useful short cut key to remember for the board insight tools, such as the HUD and Lens is F2, this will open a Menu style list of short cut keys.

For an excellent demo on the HUD and some Board Insight features, which can give you a graphical view of the information in the HUD take a look at this demo video from Altium. Board Insight

Board Insight Lens

Another useful tool in the Board Insight collection is the Lens.  This is a magnifying glass which can be either tracked with your cursor to locked to fixed position on your workspace.  The Lens can be customised under Tools » Preferences » PCB Editor » Board Insight Lens.  A demonstration video for the Board Insight Lens from Altium can be found here Board Insight

Board Insight Display

In the final part of the Altium Designer Board Level Environment section we demonstrated a number of cross probing features within the software.  These are of particular use to dual monitor users.  I created a TechWatch previously illustrating these features which can be found here Schematic and PCB Cross Probing.  

Go to back to Part 5 or Part 1.