Thursday, August 18, 2016

Rooms - Transparency

Here's a teaser. . . 

What's looks like a bunch of shorted nets?


Its a room !


This occurs when the Transparency setting is 0% for the rooms.

Fix: Change View Options > Transparency for Rooms to 60%
















That's It !

Tear Drops - Bug

As shown below there is a bug in the tear drops, not all vias have tear drops.




Using Tools > Teardrops > Add > All > Vias



























The work around:

Shelve the polygons first, then create the teardrops, then re-pour the Polygons.

Now the teardrops are properly generated.





















Altium should alert the user to shelve the polygons before generating teardrops.

Idea: create a smarter algorithm for generating the teardrops.  Example ignore the teardrop / polygon violations while generating the teardrops, then fix the polygons during the next pour.

That's it !

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Clearance Rule for Vias and Keepout

Vias violating clearance rule, where a No Net Keepout is being used.

Using the rule below I'm able use the keepout,  In the past I would replace the keepout with a polygon cutout. 

The end result is the same, however by using this rule I'm able to avoid creating the polygon cutout.

click on images to view



Clearance Rule

























OnLayer('L2 - GND PLANE') and IsKeepOut  

and 

IsVia


Different Nets

Min Clearance 3 mils (or what floats your boat).

That's It !

Monday, August 1, 2016

xSignals - Edit Class

In the PCB Panel you can Double Click on the xSignal Class to edit the Class.

Click on image to View

























The formula xSignals uses to calculate the via-used length is:


StartLayerCopper/2+(Layers between StartLayerCopper and StopLayerCopper)+StopLayerCopper/2.


That's it!