Altium Designer 14.3 brings greatly improved behavior to the way in which single objects are selected within a PCB design document. Fixed selection ordering has now been implemented that allows:

• Cycling through overlapping objects without utilizing a selection pop-up window.
• Cycling through to higher level objects (in terms of logical hierarchy) for an initial selected object, irrespective of whether or not it is part of a set of overlapping objects.

Alongside the PCB Filter panel, and the myriad of menu-based selection features, fixed single selection ordering extends the PCB Editor's array of selection tools, enabling you to quickly select the items you need to edit in an expedited and streamlined manner.

Selection of Overlapping Objects

In previous versions of Altium Designer, attempting to select an object that was effectively co-located in a 'stack' of overlapping objects (typically across different layers) caused a pop-up window to appear, from where the intended object could be quickly selected. From Altium Designer 14.3, you now have the choice of whether or not to use this pop-up selection guide. To continue using this historical pop-up guide when selecting co-located objects, enable the Display popup selection dialog option, on the PCB Editor - General page of the Preferences dialog.

Enabling the preferences option to keep the familiar pop-up selection guide, when selecting an object that resides within a grouping of co-located/overlapping objects.

With the Display popup selection dialog option disabled, selection of co-located objects obeys the following fixed order priority, cycled through use of the Tab key (or successive single left-clicks in the same position):

1. Pad
2. Via
3. Track/Arc
4. Component
5. Polygon
6. Region/Fill
7. Text

Using the Tab key (or successive single left-clicks in the same position) to cycle through selection of co-located objects, in adherence with the defined fixed selection order.

Selection of Higher Order Objects

With an initial object selected in the design, you are also able to cycle through to select a higher-level object (or extend the selection to include additional objects), based on logical hierarchy. The way in which you do this depends on whether that initial object is part of a set of overlapping objects, or not:

When the initial object selected in the design is not part of an overlapping set of objects, either use the Tab key, or the S, X keyboard sequence.

When the initial object selected in the design is part of an overlapping set of objects, use the S, X keyboard sequence. Don't use the Tab key, or you will simply cycle through the set of collocated objects.

The following cyclic logical selection 'flows' are supported:

• Track Segment ---> All Connected (Contiguous) Track Segments on the Current Layer ---> Additionally All Explicitly Connected Pins and Vias ---> All Electrical Objects in the Associated Net
• Connected Pad ---> Parent Component ---> All Net Objects Connected to Initially Selected Pad on the Current Layer ---> Additionally All Connected Net Objects on other Layers
• Unconnected Pad ---> Parent Component
• Via ---> All Electrical Objects in the Associated Net
• Component ---> All Electrical Objects in the Associated Nets
• Copper ---> All Electrical Objects in the Associated Net
• Free Pad/Via ---> Connected Track Segments ---> All Electrical Objects in the Associated Net

Example selection, extending from the initially selected track segment, up the higher-order logical hierarchy.