Altium Designer Viewer - Viewing Schematic Documents
Contents
In Altium Designer Viewer schematic documents are opened in the Sch Editor, which allows you to check and print the schematic sheets that make up a design project. The tools and utilities needed to perform checks for electrical and drafting violations, generate reports and create presentation quality schematic drawings are available in the editor.
When the Schematic Editor is active (i.e. a schematic document (*.SchDoc) is open and active) the main application window will contain:
- A main design window in which to view the design.
- Editor-specific menus and toolbars.
- Workspace panels – both global and editor-specific.
Each schematic sheet will appear, when opened, as a tabbed document view in the Schematic Editor's main design window.
The following sections offer useful hints and tips with respect to viewing and inspecting schematic documents in the main design window.
Specifying Document Options
Options specific to the active schematic document are defined in the Document Options dialog, which can be accessed by choosing Tools»Document Options from the main menus.
This dialog provides controls for defining the look and feel of the schematic sheet, specifying the units of measurement to be used and any relevant document parameters. Use the dialog's 'What's This Help' feature to obtain detailed information about each of the options available. Click on the question mark button at the top right of the dialog and then click over a field or option to pop-up information specific to that field or option.
Specifying Workspace Preferences
General workspace preferences – applicable to all schematic documents – are defined on the relevant pages contained within the Schematic section of the Preferences dialog. Choosing Tools»Schematic Preferences from the main menus will take you to the Schematic – General page of this dialog.
Again, use the dialog's 'What's This Help' feature to obtain detailed information about each of the options available across the various pages.
Right-Click Menus
Right-clicking in the main design window will pop-up a menu providing commands to access commonly used features such as document options and workspace preferences, as well as commands that are in context with the object currently under the cursor, (such as Part Actions and Find Similar Objects).
Panning
Panning in the workspace can be carried out in the following ways:
- Using the horizontal and vertical scroll bars
- Using the keyboard arrow keys (holding Shift key for faster movement)
- Using mouse-wheel for up/down, Shift+Mouse-wheel for left/right
- Right-drag mouse to pan in any direction.
Configure mouse wheel behavior for vertical and/or horizontal scrolling on the Schematic – Mouse Wheel Configuration page of the Preferences dialog.
Zooming
Zooming in the workspace can be achieved in the following ways:
- Ctrl+Right-drag mouse or Ctrl+Mouse-wheel
- Using the Page Up (zoom in) and Page Down (zoom out) keyboard shortcuts. (Hold down the Shift or Ctrl keys to provide finer and coarser zooming respectively)
- Push and hold down the mouse-wheel button, then move mouse forward or backward.
Configure mouse wheel behavior for main window zoom on the Schematic – Mouse Wheel Configuration page of the Preferences dialog.
Highlighting Pens
Click the button at the bottom right of the main design window to access the highlighting pen feature. This feature allows you to highlight connections and/or entire nets within the design.
Pressing the Spacebar while the feature is active will change the color of the pen. The following colors are available:
Blue
LightGreen
Cyan
Red
Magenta
Yellow
DarkGreen
Pressing Ctrl and clicking on a port or sheet entry while the feature is active will highlight the connection/net on the target schematic sheet.
To clear all highlighting on the active sheet, click on the Clear button at the bottom right of the main design window.
Selection Memory
The Selection Memory feature enables you to select objects in your design and save the selection for recall at any time. Commands related to this feature can be found on the Edit»Selection Memory sub-menus, but full control over the feature is also provided courtesy of the Selection Memory pop-up dialog. Access this dialog by clicking on the button at the bottom right of the main design window.
Selection Memory dialog - 'command central' for the feature.
Stored selections are only available in the memory while the applicable source schematic document remains open in the Viewer.
Filtering Objects
Main articles: Introduction to the Query Language, An Insiders Guide to the Query Language, Query Language Reference
Underlying the Viewer's Schematic Editor is a powerful query engine. By entering queries into this engine you can filter down to find and view precisely those objects you require. The Viewer's powerful data filtering system lets you instruct the software to return you a specified set of objects. This instruction is entered in the form of a Query. A query is a string you enter using specific keywords and syntax, which will return the targeted objects. What you do with those objects is up to you. Perhaps you want to highlight them, dimming out all other objects. Or perhaps you want to browse or sort their properties, and view specific attributes that they all share.
Returned results from an applied filter can be seen graphically in the workspace, or by using the SCH List and SCH Inspector panels.
There are a number of places where you can apply a query, but command central is the SCH Filter panel panel. Press F12 to quickly display/hide this panel. Query strings can be typed directly into the panel or, if you require comprehensive help to construct the required string (and not have to remember all the keywords!), click the Helper button, to access the Query Helper dialog.
courtesy of the Query Helper.
In some areas of the Viewer filtering is applied in a more automated fashion, without having to manually construct logical query expressions. The Navigator panel is one such example, where clicking on an entry in the panel will apply temporary filtering automatically. Another source of filtering is the Find Similar Objects dialog. This dialog appears when you right-click on any unmasked object in your design document and select Find Similar Objects from the context menu. The idea with this dialog is that it lets you find objects similar to the one you right-clicked on, where you define which of the object's attributes must be the same (or different) for a match.
Mask Level Controls
Click the button at the bottom right of the main design window to access a pop-up containing controls for adjusting the masking level when the mask highlight method is employed as part of temporary or permanent filtering.
controls.
The Filter slider bar controls the extent of 'dimming' when masking is applied using a permanent filter – for example when applying a query from the SCH Filter panel.
The Dim slider bar controls the extent of 'dimming' when masking is applied using a temporary filter – for example when browsing design objects on a schematic sheet using the Navigator panel or Interactive Navigation feature.
In both cases, moving a slider downwards will result in a greater level of masking – with all design objects not falling under the scope of the applied filter becoming more dimmed in the workspace.
Clear Filtering
Click on the button at the bottom right of the main design window, or use the Shift+ C shortcut, in order to clear any existing filtering applied to the current schematic document. If the filtering is temporary in nature, you can click anywhere inside the main design window in order to clear the filtering. If the applied filtering is permanent in nature, you must use this button, or one of its counterparts which can be found in the respective dialog(s) or panel(s) from which the original filtering was initiated.
Using this button will also remove any highlighting applied using the Highlighting Pen feature.
Associated Panels
Main article: Altium Designer Panels Reference
The following workspace panels are specific to the Schematic Editor:
Certain workspace panels, although not specific to the Schematic Editor, will be used frequently when viewing and inspecting a design including: the Projects panel, Navigator panel and Messages panel. For more information on a specific panel, press F1 when the cursor is over that panel.