Author Topic: Measurement tool for PCB in free Altium viewer?  (Read 1584 times)

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Offline ocsetTopic starter

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Measurement tool for PCB in free Altium viewer?
« on: January 19, 2021, 10:00:03 pm »
Hi
Is there a Measurement tool for PCB  in free Altium viewer?
At the moment i'm doing it by drawing a rectangle with corners at the points where i want to measure from/to...then doing hyp=sqrt(o^2+a^2).
Its difficult to hold the rectangle on still  with my left hand on the mouse, and then copy dx and dy from the screen with my right hand using a pen.
 

Offline thm_w

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Re: Measurement tool for PCB in free Altium viewer?
« Reply #1 on: January 19, 2021, 10:43:54 pm »
ctrl + m to measure
Profile -> Modify profile -> Look and Layout ->  Don't show users' signatures
 
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Offline PlainName

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Re: Measurement tool for PCB in free Altium viewer?
« Reply #2 on: January 21, 2021, 08:07:14 pm »
Quote
Its difficult to hold the rectangle on still  with my left hand on the mouse, and then copy dx and dy from the screen with my right hand using a pen.

Sounds like you're making a rod for your own back! The correct answer is, of course, given above. But suppose there wasn't an actual measuring tool and one had to do it via your method....

I assume you're right-handed since you write the answer with that hand, so using the mouse left-handed is going to lead to tears regardless of anything else. Why can you not use the mouse normally and then, when the rectangle's corner is where you want it, just leave go of the mouse? It's not going to run off after some cheese but will stay where you leave it. Then copy the measurements at your leisure.

But aside from that, I am intrigued as to why you need to do that at all. Can you not just look at the screen and repeat to yourself, sotto voce, "128, 57" or whatever the x and y values are. Surely they would then stay in your mind long enough to pick up a pen and write them down without needing to refer to the screen mid-transcription.
 
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Offline ajb

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Re: Measurement tool for PCB in free Altium viewer?
« Reply #3 on: January 21, 2021, 11:04:35 pm »
In addition to the proper Ctrl+M measurement tool, if you have the heads-up display enabled you can use the dx and dy values for quick measurements along those axes.  Shift+H toggles the HUD, Shift+D toggles the delta display, press the insert key to reset the delta values to zero at the cursor location.
 
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