Schematic Annotation based on Part Location
Altium Designer's schematic annotation feature is unquestionably powerful. But its reliance on the component designator as the sole reference for component location when processing annotation order can lead to unexpected designations. Offering greater control over the annotation of components on your schematic source documents, Altium Designer also provides the ability to use the part – more specifically the center of the part – as the reference for component location.
Access
Choose between use of Designator or Part location when determining annotation processing order, using the Process Location of drop-down field, in the Schematic Annotation Configuration region of the Annotate dialog (Tools » Annotate Schematics).
determining processing order.
Example
To illustrate the advantage of having this ability, consider the four capacitor components in the following image. While the components themselves are all neatly aligned in a vertical sense, the designator of the second capacitor from the left is slightly lower than the others.
The following image shows the result of annotation using the Designator to determine component location and subsequent annotation processing order. The Order of Processing has been set to Across Then Down. As you can see, even though the four components are in alignment, the position of the designator for the second capacitor causes undesirable annotation – it's given a designation of C4, instead of the expected/required C2.
The following image shows the result of annotation using the Part (center of part) to determine component location and subsequent annotation processing order. As you can see, all four components are now designated as expected/required.
