Working with a Drill Table Object on a Draftsman Document in Altium NEXUS

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Parent page: Draftsman Objects

A placed Drill Table with hole entries grouped by size.A placed Drill Table with hole entries grouped by size.

Summary

A Draftsman Drill Table is an automatically generated table object that contains board drill symbols and data. The Drill Table, combined with Draftsman's Drill Drawing View, provides both tabular and graphic information for the board fabrication process.

Each Drill Table entry, representing a specified type of drill hole (and matching Symbol), can include a range of hole information such as its size, plated construction and population count. The table's visual style and data content, including the symbol used, is configurable in (or via) the Properties panel. 

Availability

A Drill Table is available for placement in a PCB project Draftsman document from the Editor as follows:

  • Choose the Place » Drill Table command from the main menu.
  • Click the  button in the table objects drop-down menu on the Active Bar located at the top of the workspace. Click and hold an Active Bar button to access other related commands. Once a command has been used, it will become the topmost item on that section of the Active Bar.
  • Right-click in the drawing workspace then select Place » Drill Table from the context menu.
  • Click the Drill Table () entry in tables drop-down menu () on the Drawing Annotations toolbar (View » Toolbars » Drawing Annotations to enable).

Placement

After launching the command, drill hole data is retrieved from the source PCB file, the cursor will change to a cross-hair and the generated Drill Table is attached to the cursor. Move the cursor to the desired position then click to confirm the placement.

Note that hole data is retrieved from the PCB document specified in the Source section of the Properties panel when in Document Options mode. To change the panel to that mode, deselect all objects in the workspace (i.e. click in free space).

Graphical Editing

The position of a placed Drill Table may be graphically changed by selecting the table in the workspace then dragging it to a new location. Note that the table cannot be graphically resized, but will automatically scale to accommodate the font style/size, as specified in the Properties panel.

The default settings for the Drill Table are available in the Draftsman - Defaults page of the Preferences dialog.

Non-Graphical Editing

Properties page: Drill Table Properties

The non-graphical method of editing a Drill Table is available in the Draftsman Properties panel, which provides a range of editable properties, style and design content settings for placed Draftsman objects.

The Properties panel when a Drill Table is selected.The Properties panel when a Drill Table is selected.

To open the Properties panel and access the properties of a placed Drill Table:

  • Double-click on the Drill Table object in the workspace.
  • Right-click on the Drill Table then select Item Properties from the context menu.

If the Properties panel is already active:

  • Click on the Drill Table object to access its properties in the panel.
To manually open the Properties panel, select View » Panels » Properties from the main menu or click the button at the bottom right of the workspace then select Properties from the pop-up menu.
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