Polygon pour priority

[jc101]

Is there the ability in CS to set polygon pour priorities?  I can do it in Eagle easily, and it seems the full Altium has an option to create priorities where pour areas overlap.

I had some polygons on a layer all doing their thing, then put a layer wide pour on to make a ground fill, and it simply stomps over all the smaller pours.  Also it seems these smaller pours get set to 'un-poured' and no matter what I do to turn them back on they are set like that.  So it looks like in CS the ability to have overlapping polygons doesn't seem to be work, or has been crippled.  I would be very glad to hear if this is not the case!

[Ice-Tea]

If CS is like AD:

Tools -> Polygon Pours -> Polygon Manager

[jc101]

If CS is like AD:

Tools -> Polygon Pours -> Polygon Manager

Thanks, but sadly not, they stripped most of the menus out in CS. The functionality is probably there just no means to get at it.  It's kind of a fundamental feature so quite annoying really.

[T3sl4co1l]

Try right-click on one, or select one and look under Tools or Polygon Actions, "bring to front" or "send to back"?

Tim

[jc101]

Try right-click on one, or select one and look under Tools or Polygon Actions, "bring to front" or "send to back"?

Tim

I couldn't see anything like that, they seemingly are treated as single objects. What's odd is you have two overlapping on different nets and it doesn't report an DRC, it just prevents ones it has determined to stomp over as un-poured.

I am assuming there must be a way hidden away in there somewhere....

[trophosphere]

The highest priority is given to whichever polygon you pour first with subsequent polygon pours being of lower priority until the last polygon has the lowest priority. I don't believe there is a way to change the priority on demand. As far as the polygon being automatically set as unpoured, make sure you have unchecked the "Remove Islands Less Than" option in the polygon pour menu for your polygon of interest (update all polygon pours after doing this or the results will not show).

In the following example, the silkscreen denotes the order in which the polygons were poured. Note that the first polygon takes precedence over all the other later poured polygons.

[jc101]

That kind of makes sense, and I think i could work with that, thanks.  So it's a case of do the smaller pours and then the final layer fill at the end.

[trophosphere]

Yes, if you want your smaller polygons to show through then pour them first before pouring on the ground fill.

[Ice-Tea]

If that doesn't help with your problem, get one of these:



... and buy Altium Designer 

[jmarkwolf]

If that doesn't help with your problem, get one of these:



... and buy Altium Designer 

LOL, Well put Ice-Tea!

[Harvs]

If you really needed to change something already done, you can hack the pcbdoc file.

Open with a MCDF viewer like SSView or the viewer that comes with OpenMCDF.

Find yourself the "D7038392280E4E229B9D9B5426B295" folder, and open the "Data" file contained in it (how you do this is different for each viewer).  This holds the records for polygon pours as far as I can tell.

On each polygon entry you'll find a tag POURINDEX=x, where the lower the number the closer to the front it will be.

There is a bit to hacking the pcbdoc files, it's not what you'd call user friendly.  But in this case if you stick to the same number of digits you wont have to resize the entry length field.

[technotronix]

Check this out. May this will be helpful. http://techdocs.altium.com/display/ADOH/Polygon+Pour+Improvements

[Zbig]

Try right-click on one, or select one and look under Tools or Polygon Actions, "bring to front" or "send to back"?

Tim

I couldn't see anything like that, they seemingly are treated as single objects. What's odd is you have two overlapping on different nets and it doesn't report an DRC, it just prevents ones it has determined to stomp over as un-poured.

I am assuming there must be a way hidden away in there somewhere....

Added in 1.4, apparently. https://www.element14.com/community/docs/DOC-84478/l/altium-circuitstudio-v14-release:

#365    Added "Bring to Front" and "Send to Back" commands for polygons.