Altium Designer 10 - Basics - Reusing multiple tracks or traces

After you have done fanout with your surface mount components on your design project,
the task of interconnecting the signals or nets of your circuit will be your next challenge.

On this tutorial, I will provide you the procedures on reusing multiple tracks/traces and
how to move them from one layer to another.


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Altium Designer 10 - Basics - Reusing fanout of surface mount components

Fanout is the via and trace pair that is connected to a surface mount pad.
It allows connectivity of the signal from the surface layers going to the inner
layers of the board.

In this tutorial, I will discuss with you the procedures on reusing fanout of surface mount components and the option of reusing them in an array of surface mount pads.


1. Let's assume that you have placed all your components on the board,
and the placement has been cleared of violation and clearance errors. Fanout of surface
mount components will have to be done prior to routing the whole board. In this case,
we will do manual routing/layout if the board as opposed to using the Autorouter feature
of your PCB layout software.

To start with, click on the Interactively route Connections.


2. Alternately, you may go to Place and select Interactive Routing
on the dropdown menu.

3. The cursor changes and this indicates the you are in the interactively routing mode.

4. The pads or vias can now be selected for routing. A circle appears with the pointer to indicate the center of the pad or via being selected for routing.

5. Drag the mouse to the direction you want to route and trace will appear from the pad or via.

6. At a point where you want to have a via on your connection, press '2' while routing.

Note:
This is the shortcut command to add via while on the routing mode.

Press 'ESC' to terminate the routing and the via will end in place.


7. Select the via and the track/trace. This is done by selecting either the via or the track/trace first then hold the SHIFT key and select the other object.


8. To copy the fanout, use the CTRL + C command. An alternative would be Right Mouse Click and select Copy from the menu.

The pointer will change to a big crosshair and will then allow you to select the center/origin to which your copied fanout (track/via) will be referenced.


9. Use the CTRL + V command or Right Mouse click then Paste from the menu to paste the copied fanout.

Position the pointer to the location similar to the reference pad or via from which it was copied. Click on that location to end the process.

Continue as needed to the other pads or vias with similar properties for the fanout.


Reusing fanouts in an array is very helpful in reusing fanout for surface mount IC's (integrated circuits).
Below are the procedures:

10. Assuming you have copied the fanout from Step 8.
Go to the main menu on the PCB workspace, then select Edit then Paste Special.

11. A popup window for the Paste Special settings.
Check Paste on current layer and click on Paste Array.

12. Paste Array setup windows appears and it allows you to
set the values for:

    Placement variables
    Array type
    Linear Array
    Circular Array


13. Select the pad for the start of the fanout array.
Then, click on the selected pad.

14. The fanout have been reused in an array of pads.

Hope this helps.


Reference:
Altium Live Forum


Thanks to Dennis Saputelli


The sequence is:
select something
Ctrl C
Click a reference or base point, maybe the end of the track in this case
Ctrl V
Click on target location to complete the paste

Altium Designer 10 - Basics - Open PCB and Schematic files on a Project

There are instances where there are more than a single sheet on the schematic you're working with on your project. Here's how to open the multiple files for your project in Altium Designer 10:

1. Run Altium Designer on your computer thru Program files or simply double click
(using your mouse) on the *.PrjPcb file of your design.

2. As your Altium Designer 10 workspace appears, point your mouse to the lower right of the AD10 workspace. These tabs offer various functions to the user.

3. For this purpose, we are going to select the System.



4. Another set of choices will popup and we would want to select Projects this time.



5. A project directory tree will now appear on the left portion of your AD10 workspace.
A list of the .PrjPcb files and the corresponding design files/other documents/settings can be seen.



The paper icon (the one with RED color indicates an opened file. Other than that, the blank rows below that column indicates un-opened files.

6. Right click on the appropriate .PrjPcb file for your project and select the
Open Project Documents on the selection.



7. Finally, a popup window will appear to confirm the opening of your project documents.



Click YES to proceed.
Now you have opened all the schematic and pcb files for your design for you to start working on.

Altium Designer 10 - Basics - Coloring multiple nets by batch (Placement/Routing)

If you want to color a selection of nets on your pcb,

Here are the steps:

1. On the PCB panel, you can select Nets from the dropdown menu.

2. Click anywhere on the whitespace below Net Classes (1 Highlighted).

3. Choose Add class on the popup menu.


This allows you to create a New Class for a selection of nets.

4. On the Edit Net Class window, you can choose the nets you would want to be included in the class.


The Name field is for the class name, and NewClass is the default name.

The name is user's preference.

The Non-Members are the nets to choose from.

5. By using Shift or Ctrl key, you can select the nets you want to be included in the class.

6. Clicking on the > symbol adds your selection to the created class.

For this example, we will pick and change the color for the best fit PE channels.

(Clicking on the >> adds all nets as members to the class, which is not our goal.)


Then OK to close the Edit Net Class window.

7. The net class created now appears on the list of net class.

Selecting it from the list gives a list of the nets included in the class.



8. Right click on the list of nets for the class and click Select all to select all nets.

(Pressing SHIFT and clicking from the start and end of the selection, is an alternative)

9. Right click again, choose Display override - Selected ON.



Notice that the nets that belong to the created class will be checked.

10. Right click again, choose Change net color and select the appropriate color.