Creating Drawings in Altium

[Mikekoz13]

Good morning all-

I'm interested in knowing how folks create their drawing documentation in Altium. When we set Altium up we created DXF files of our drawing formats from our old software and read the DXF files into Altium. Then we created a template database for each standard drawing size (B-Size, C-Size, D-Size). In those templates we added information such as the drawing formats, notes and other items that are standard for all our drawings for each of those standard drawing sizes. When the designer opens the template the default board is right in the middle of the drawing format.

This has worked OK for us but I'm wondering if there might be a better way to handle some things. I've had to create various sizes of each of the standard drawing size templates in order to accomodate different size boards. For instance, I've had to create 1/2 scale, 1/4 scale, and even 1/10 scale formats of our D-Size formats in order to make smaller and smaller board sizes appear large when the drawings are plotted. For instance.... a very small board would use the 1/10 scale format and then be plotted at 10/1 to get a drawing that is actually useful. I've done the same for the other standard size formats. Part of the problem with having all these various scaled sizes of the standard formats is that anytime notes or other standard information needs to be added or updated it becomes a big, time consuming effort.

I recently discovered the "Design Views" and thought this would be a great way to get rid of the multiple format scales for each drawing size because you can actually scale the Design View and it is "smart" so that it updates when you make board changes. So I placed a 2/1 design view of a board into a D-Size format but just off to the right of the actual board. Then I plotted all of our standard drawings to make sure everything looked correct when plotted.

The Assembly drawing looked great BUT the Drill Drawing was a problem. The drill symbols did not plot in the Design View on the drawing. So it looks like this option won't work. Or am I missing something here?

Thanks for any help!

Anyone have any ideas on this?

[DerekG]

I'm interested in knowing how folks create their drawing documentation in Altium.

I use a program called Capture Wiz Pro. Another program you could use is ScreenPresso.

In Altium you make the board as large as you want on the screen. You choose the colours for your layers, you choose which layers you want displayed etc etc.

With Capture Wiz Pro you simply draw a rectangle around what you want, copy it to the clipboard, then paste it into Word (so it is easy to document each screenshot) or your favourite artwork program (ie Irfanview, Corel Draw etc). Then print this to you PDF print driver & everyone will see your screenshot exactly how you viewed it.

I have found this method to be very quick & lets you choose & display exactly what you want. It is much more flexible than generating these types of outputs fom within Altium itself.

[Mikekoz13]

Thanks Derek. Everything needs to remain in Altium for us.

Anyone else?

[free_electron]

1) i never understood why people still muck about with drill drawings. What is the purpose of that ?
Do you really believe there is any use for such drawings ?
The machine readable data ( gerber + ncdrill + odb ) holds all information needed. there is no use for a drill drawing.

2) why do you want to scale board layouts ? a pcb layout is NEVER scaled. leave it as-is.

[DerekG]

Thanks Derek. Everything needs to remain in Altium for us.

Do you really document all the assembly instructions in Altium? In all my years of contracting, I have never seen this.

Pasting your screen shots into Word (or Publisher) as described above, with all the notations required for the project is lots faster than handling cumbersome text within Altium.

You then save the Word (or Publisher) document as a PDF so everyone can read it without paying for any software.

You can add the Word (or Publisher) file, along with the PDF file into the Altium Project database, so when you open Altium you can see it & open it from there.

In this way, the added files never get lost.

[jmarkwolf]

This has worked OK for us but I'm wondering if there might be a better way to handle some things. I've had to create various sizes of each of the standard drawing size templates in order to accomodate different size boards. For instance, I've had to create 1/2 scale, 1/4 scale, and even 1/10 scale formats of our D-Size formats in order to make smaller and smaller board sizes appear large when the drawings are plotted.

This is how I've done it for years also. Never found a better way. Although We've only ever needed half-size and full-size title blocks.

[Mikekoz13]

1) i never understood why people still muck about with drill drawings. What is the purpose of that ?
Do you really believe there is any use for such drawings ?
The machine readable data ( gerber + ncdrill + odb ) holds all information needed. there is no use for a drill drawing.

2) why do you want to scale board layouts ? a pcb layout is NEVER scaled. leave it as-is.

Well if I had my way I would NEVER create another formal drawing of any type... HOWEVER.... where I work, due to program requirements these types of drawings are sometimes required.
I'm NOT scaling the layout. I'm scaling the drawing formats that surrounds the layout to create a formal drawing.

I've been doing pc layout for over 35 years and have seen it all come and go. It's still beyond me why any formal drawings are needed anymore. All that should be required are the layout in Altium, the generated fabrication data, and a couple of simple documents with any pertinent notes or information. BUT old habits die hard for a lot of people.
I have been able to bring most of my regular customers into the 21st century with things but there are always holdouts. I very, very, very rarely do drawings but others I work with do need to do them. I'm the guy that sets all that stuff up..... thus my original question.

[KenGaler]

Often the NTRL such as UL or TUV wants a 1:1 pdf of all the layers.  They actually want to measure trace and creepage sizes using a ruler on paper.  Silly, but I guess that they would need at least a viewer of every CAD package out there to do it properly.

Altium won't do this and I've been looking for a convenient method.

[free_electron]

Often the NTRL such as UL or TUV wants a 1:1 pdf of all the layers.  They actually want to measure trace and creepage sizes using a ruler on paper.  Silly, but I guess that they would need at least a viewer of every CAD package out there to do it properly.

Altium won't do this and I've been looking for a convenient method.

altium can perfectly generate a 1:1 scaled drawing. in the outjob setting simply specify that the output needs to be 1:1. altium will split the output automatically across multiple pages if the paper format cannot hold the drawing. the scale overrides paper setting.

[T3sl4co1l]

Almost all Altium output I've seen, the PDF generates at an incorrect nonsense page dimension (e.g., 10.67 x 8.00").  Don't know offhand if this is different or configurable within the OutJob (I recall Smart PDF and OutJob outputs are subtly different), or if it's still around in Altium 15.

I normally tell it to print "fit to page", on the correct paper, and it works out OK (I think that should be slightly under scale, unfortunately, because the printer won't scale to net size, but to net size minus a small margin all around).

Tim