*.Outjob Consistancy

[mysteryname]

Hello all,

I have altium on multiple computers and I have started to create a *.Outjob file to bring some more consistency with the outputs that I have been creating.

Outjobs have been great in the content that I have been exporting except for one item.. The layer colours.

Depending if I'm on my laptop or my desktop I have a different colour scheme for these computers. I have created a job file to export to PDF and other. However the outjob pulls the current colour scheme I have on the current computer that I'm working on.

Does altium allow for a Simple colour export scheme?

The version of altium major build is 10. I don't know if the later versions have this feature.

Thank you
Mysteryname.

[sacherjj]

What application are you viewing the outputs that you want colored?  All the gerbers have normal file extensions.  So if you configure the colors in the viewer to correspond to that layer type, you are set.  I don't know of any color based export.  I'm running whatever the latest build of 13 is.

[mysteryname]

It was all within Altium,

For example, I would do a design on one computer and export a assembly drawing onto a PDF, it will have a set range of colours. However if I export on the second computer, the user preferences will be slightly different. (ie. Different shade of red for the top layer)

These changes would be exported, making the same PCB file appear different on the two PDFs once printed out.

We have Altium 10 not 13.

Thank you.

[tszaboo]

I hope this helps. Unfortunately, you have to click it every time on different PCs.
But I think this is nothing compared to the BOM export mess.

[mysteryname]

I hope this helps. Unfortunately, you have to click it every time on different PCs. But I think this is nothing compared to the BOM export mess.

It is a mess, I had found that button thank you. However when you click that it does not import the mechanical layers colours either.

Ahhh, there is no victory with Altium.

It looks like it has to be done manually on each computer, which realistically is not a massive pain but users do have their own preferences in the colour scheme, I like mine quite dark and it does not translate the the PDF that well, so I load a lighter colour preference file and then export... each time..

Cheers though

[free_electron]

The color preferences are local to the machine. Ad14 will allow for all that stuff to be stored on a shared folder. That will bring all the machines in sync with each other.

But it looks like you dont want that as you want to muck with the colors on each individual machine.

[mysteryname]

The color preferences are local to the machine. Ad14 will allow for all that stuff to be stored on a shared folder. That will bring all the machines in sync with each other.

This sounds like a great feature! for the sole purpose of exporting PDFs of the copper and other layers. The colours need to be the same from computer to computer.

But it looks like you dont want that as you want to muck with the colors on each individual machine.

Of course, My laptop has a different colour profile to my monitor at home.

It's a odd situation, But what happens for the companies that have multiple people that use altium and require consistency between each of the exports from altium?

[free_electron]

what do you mean with consistency ? i always export in monochrome.

[mysteryname]

what do you mean with consistency ? i always export in monochrome.

Monochrome would make this issue go away. However, exporting in full colour is what I'm trying to achieve, if one computer has one colour scheme eg, Dark red for the copper and dark yellow for the silk screen and another computer has another colour scheme, Bright red for the top copper.

When exporting, the colour that is exported is the same as what is displayed on the monitor.

I opened the *.Outjob file with a text editor and found there are no colours stored in the file and currently I have a list of numbers (for each colour, 3==black) written down that I have to manually check to ensure that the export is consistent with previous exports. It is niche, however there seems to be no support for a consistent colour export.

The original question is to see if altium had this feature, but sadly it seems that it does not.

[PlainName]

Perhaps I'm missing something (like, a copy of Altium) but surely the layer colours are loadable en mass via themes or profiles? Thus you have a profile for normal work, and when you want to export or 'be company compatible' you load up the company profile and do whatever needs doing. Then switch back to your own preference?

I have to say that that seems sensible to me. My own preference is for solder side tracks to be red, component side blue (there are sound reasons for this, not least because that's how it always used to be and the vice versa scheme is a johnny come lately pervertion). It would Really Bad if some board I was looking at forced another scheme on me - I would easily get confused about which layer is which.

[jamiechi]

With the PCB document open, select the menu "Design/Board Layers and Colors...". On the left side of the View Configurations Dialog, (with Board Layers and Colors tab selected,) you can select existing View Configurations or create new ones. (See lower left Actions area.)

The files are normally kept in your Templates folder but you can save them anywhere. The file can be copied and loaded on other computers.
For example: My PCB View.config_2dsimple

As far as I can tell, only the colors are saved. The Mechanical Layer names are saved in the .PCBDOC document.

I am using version 13 of Altium. I don't know how far back this information is applicable for.

I hope this helps.