Advanced setting of the width rule in this design secret, altium shows you a little known, yet very powerful width rule setting from altium designer the ability to check the minmax width for physically connected copper. A track segment is a primitive design object and is a straight line of a defined width. Those who have some knowledge of electric circuits would probably look at the default width and intuitively know that its too narrow for some nets particularly power supply and ground. Clicking the pcb button at the bottomright of altium designer when the pcb editor is active then selecting the pcb inspector entry from the popup menu. Altium designer 20 provides electronic designers and engineers with a single, unified application that incorporates all the technologies and capabilities necessary for complete electronic product development. After importing cam data into a cam document, you will notice that the export to pcb option is grayedout, regardless of the current cam editor mode cam or nc. A routing width design rule scoped to set the width of all nets to 0. The ultimate pcb design software comparison sfcircuits.
You can also change the width of the via that you are using with your routing in the same way that you changed the width of your track. The rules you have to stick to in layout should include. After using altium for many years, you begin to pick up on little tricks to make your pcb design life easier. The original graphs that this tool is based on published in ipcd275 only cover up to 35 amps, up to 0. I havent met a pcb designer yet who doesnt like to manually route tracks on. The problem might be with altium not picking the preferred value for the particular net. That is, even if the current routing width is different to the existing track, the existing track width will be adopted when you continue the route from it. Outline only polygons are simply trackarc polygons without the internal tracks and arcs. Altium designers interactive routing engine will automatically terminate the current track segment and start a new segment at the room boundary, to satisfy a rule such as this. You can specify the number of sides, the size using either the vertex radius, the edge radius, or the edge length as a metric, the track width, the rotation, and more.
Using the choose width menu while routing you can see in the top half of the picture above that we are changing our routing width to 10 mils. The default routing width design rule that is applied to all nets for a new pcb. Check tracksarcs minmax width individually checks individual widths of tracks and arcs fall within the minimum and maximum range. Use tracks to define a straight line in the pcb workspace.
The routing width fields can be set globally by defining a value in the individual width constraint fields, or individually by typing a width value directly into the table. There are 4 placed track segments in the image above, and another in the process of being placed. This javascript web calculator calculates the trace width for printed circuit board conductors for a given current using formulas from ipc2221 formerly ipcd275. For everyone who designs a pcb, at some point youre faced with the decision of defining trace width. Note that they can also be solid by setting the track width to be larger than the grid size. A default hotkey of shiftw brings up a menu of the favourite track widths. Many times, newcomers to board design will simply use the default width in the pcb layout software. Changes the font size width and height of all component designators. Min width specifies the minimum permissible width to be used for tracks when routing the board preferred width specifies the preferred width to be used for tracks when routing the board max width specifies the maximum permissible width to be used for tracks when routing the board. Assuming you are running the current version of altium designer, while interactive routing there is a default hotkey of 3 to cycle through a list of favourite track widths. We can convert your protel 99se and dxp, and altium designer 6, summer 08 and winter 09 pcb design files to gerbers. Error ecking o void saster the advantage to this is it shows all applicable rules and if there is a green check next to it, then its valid. Release notes for the summer 09 service pack 1 release of altium designer. When the characteristic impedance driven width option is enabled, the required width entries will be automatically calculated and entered for each layer in the table.
Altium designer integrates board and fpgalevel system design, embedded software development, and pcb layout, editing, and manufacturing within a single design. Those who have some knowledge of electric circuits would probably look at the default width and intuitively know that its too narrow for some nets particularly power supply and. Helpful tips for interactive routing in altium designer altium. Also, if more than one rule is available, the rule on top is the. Pickup track width from existing routes enable this option to use the existing track width when routing from a placed track. Polygon pour online documentation for altium products. The miter ratio multiplied by the current track width equals the. There are four placed track segments in the image above, and another in the process of being placed. When vias still need to be big like for power, you could also add extra filters to only select vias with certain hole sizes, but youd have to look up what parameter this is saved in. This command allows you to reverseengineer a pcb layout directly from cam files. As long as those widths dont violate any rules currently in use, altium will switch the track that you are currently routing to the new width. Min width specifies the minimum permissible width to be used for tracks when routing the board. Components that need fixed locations should be fixed first so as to stop them being moved when moving other.
A track segment is a primitive design object, a straight line of a defined width. Altium designer room and trace width digital massive. Altium supports 3d view and we can clearly see how to fit pcb on my cad design. Select the layer and traces you want to change amd hide other layers and traces. Is there a limit to the amount of current this tool can calculate a width for. Many of the default settings are not helpful, for example the connection matrix which determines which combinations of. My solution, auto route with 40mil power, then change to 20mil power and.
These calculations are believed to be correct, but not. The list of favourite widths can be configured under toolspreferencespcb editorinteractive. Altium designer has thousand of advanced features to design pcbs. To see a list of them, press the button above tab while placing the track. Edit this field to change the track width within the range 0. Interactive routing online documentation for altium products.
A friend didnt know how to access the pcb inspector so added this comment. There are already tons of articles like this available and theyll all bore you to death with the same mundane details with the exception of a select few. Before letting autorouter run is there a way to set the power traces e. Changed default column width in find similar objects in pcb to better accommodate attribute descriptions.
How to change size of several selected tracks in altium. It pays to have some basic standardsprotocols when working with altium, otherwise things can get ugly real quick. Then you manually change the width of the highcurrent traces to the maximum width. To change the track width source while routing, press the 3 key on. I recommend altium designer for anyone who is interested in electronic circuit. I entered a 65 amp current requirement and it returned a track width that must be incorrect. If we did any changes on the pcb design layout which are not on the schematic those changes also can be export to the schematic. In altium designer we can easily import the changes we made on the schematic. Altium gives you a similar amount of options for via size preference as it did with the routing width, and you can toggle between these by pressing the 4 key while routing. I really like the ability to make files of the pcb to send online pcb manufacturing service. Layout guide to changing board sizes in altium designer. Trackarc based polygons allow a hatched polygon to be created, by setting the track width to be smaller than the grid size. The ultimate pcb design software comparison guide comparing the top 6 pcb cad programs.
The ipc2221 data from which these formulas are derived only covers up to 35 amps, trace width up to 400 mils, allowable temperature rise from 10 to 100 degrees celsius, and copper of 0. However, if there is a red x, then it indicates the rule is violated. Often times you can simply use that board outline and modify it according to your needs as we will do here. A guideline from schematic to pcb design based on altium. Then you can use pcb inspector to change values all at once.
My question, is there a correctbetter way to change a tracks net class to. Use pcb filter to filter for all objects by using the statement isvia. Layers in layerstack only allows you to display and edit the width constraints for just the defined signal layers in the layer stack. While you are routing you may want to change the width of your track. Repeat for clearance rules switch sizes on the flywhen interactively routing i. Once the rule is defined, as you route a net that falls under the scope of the rule, the track width will automatically be set to the width required to meet the specified impedance for that layer. Overall altium is one of best pcb design software ive ever used. Although you could simply set up the defaults and start routing your pcb. A track segment is a primitive design object that is a straight line of a defined width. This is the expansion of mask relief over pad area.
Preplacement settings most track object properties, or those that can. The default settings for interactive routing are configured in the pcb editor. The first step will be to set the origin by going to edit origin set as you can see on the left side of the picture below. This is really messed up with altium 18 to the extent that you should always pay attention to the width that is selected when routing a track. To change the track width source while routing, press the 3 key on the. We can customize the design rules such as track width, pad sizes, clearance and etc as we needed. Advanced circuits will modify files to meet the minimum dimension. Track objects are used for routing and for general purpose drawing lines. It was, 20mil default track width good, 40mil power tracks bad, too wide. Helpful tips for interactive routing in altium designer. In this part, line width, distance between lines, line width of power lines and ground lines are set. Change width of all traces tracks in eagle electronics.