Driving Fabrication Outputs using a Variant

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Modified by Admin on Nov 26, 2013

Previously when defining the output generators in an Output Job file, variants of a design could only be used to drive those outputs which are not fabrication-based. This, by definition, is the very essence of an assembly variant – varying only the assembled board and not the underlying fabricated bare-board. Altium Designer brings with it the ability to now allow a defined variant to drive fabrication outputs. From a PCB Configuration perspective, this enables you to define different configurations for your PCB design project, targeting revisions of different fabricated bare-board (Blank Board) Items, based on the chosen 'driving' variant.

What does this ability give me?

This feature allows you to vary the comment for a component in your design, and feed this change through to the following fabricated outputs:

Gerber files
ODB++ files
Composite Drill Drawings
Drill Drawing/Guides
Final Artwork Prints.

More specifically, this concerns the silkscreen layer – the layer upon which the component comment will appear.

This ability is an enhancement to the way in which variants can be used, it allows you to vary a fabrication output. Although it is fabrication output that is being changed, it is only changing the silkscreen output based on a variation in the component's Comment parameter. You can not change any other aspect of the fabricated board, such as the routing, the layout of the components, or the layer stack.

Enabling the Feature

The ability to drive fabrication outputs is determined at the variant level, from within the Variant Management dialog. Access this dialog either from the main Project menu (Project»Variants), or by clicking the button on the Variants toolbar.

For each defined variant, a check box is available – associated with the option to Allow variation of fabrication outputs. By default, the check box is unchecked, meaning that the ability to drive fabrication outputs from the variant is Not Allowed. Click the box to toggle this state to Allowed as required.

Empower your variants to drive fabrication-based outputs in a single click!

In terms of PCB Configurations, if the option to drive fabrication outputs is enabled for a variant, that variant can be used to drive the outputs for configurations targeting both Blank Board and Assembled Board Items.

In previous releases of Altium Designer (Summer 09 and earlier), only the term Assembly Variant was used when defining variants. For Altium Designer 10 (and beyond), where such variants can also now drive (to some extent) fabrication outputs, this terminology has been made more generic, and so just termed Variant. If a particular defined variant is not allowed to drive fabrication outputs it can, technically, still be referred to as an Assembly Variant.