The Summer 09 release brings even greater control over the highlighting of nets on your PCB documents, using your own overriding color scheme. Now, instead of purely having a net object colored using its respective layer color, you can assign to use a specific alternative color. Add to this a range of preconfigured color override patterns and you have a powerful enhancement to your PCB visualization arsenal.

Defining Net Coloring

The actual colors for the nets are assigned from the PCB panel, with its browsing mode set to Nets. You can assign a color to an individual net, multiple selected nets, or to all nets in one or more selected net classes. Simply make your selection accordingly – either in the Net Classes or Nets regions of the panel – and then right-click and choose the Change Net Color command from the context menu. Use the Choose Color dialog to select the color you wish to use.

The chosen net color will appear, for each affected net, in the far left field in the Nets region of the panel. This field also presents a checkbox, which is used to enable the color-override feature for that net (see Enabling Net Color Override).

Override Patterns

Having assigned the override colors to your nets, you can now choose how your new net highlight coloring will be used. The net highlighting is governed by a specified Base Pattern. There are six such patterns to choose from, defined on the PCB Editor – Board Insight Color Overrides page of the Preferences dialog (DXP»Preferences).

Table 1 illustrates example results based on the chosen pattern. In each case, the assigned net override color is .

There are also options for how the nets are displayed when you zoom out. For example, you can elect to have the assigned net override color become more dominant the further you zoom out, until the layer color is not noticeable – and vice-versa. Play with the options available from the Zoom Out Behavior region of the page, to find the setting that best suits your needs and working preference.

Enabling Net Color Override

As with assigning colors to nets, you can enable/disable the net color override feature for an individual net, multiple selected nets, or all nets in one or more selected net classes. Simply make your selection accordingly – either in the Net Classes or Nets regions of the panel – and then right-click and choose either the Display Color Override»Selected On or Display Color Override»Selected Off command from the context menu as appropriate. For individual nets you can also just click inside the associated checkbox, in the far left field for a net.

The enabled nets will be displayed in accordance with defined coloring and chosen override pattern.

Using Net Override Color in PCB Prints

Your chosen net override color (and base pattern, where applicable) can also be included in printouts from the PCB. To do this, simply enable the Use Net override color option, in the PCB Print Preferences dialog.