Working with Views

Now reading version 24. For the latest, read: Working with Views for version 25

Draftsman allows a range of automated production drawings to be placed directly onto a Draftsman drawing document.

The type of drawing to be placed can be selected from the Place main menu.

Draftsman's Place main menu provides access to placement commands for views.
Draftsman's Place main menu provides access to placement commands for views.

Alternatively, use the Active Bar or the Place submenu of the design space right-click menu.

For more information about object placement and editing, refer to the Draftsman Placement & Editing Techniques page.

Controlling the Scale of a Placed View

The size of a view placed in a Draftsman document is defined by its scale value. Where supported, the scale of a placed view can be changed in the Properties panel using options available in the panel's Scale region when the view is selected in the design space.

You can either use the Scale drop-down to choose from a range of preset scale ratios or, when the Use Custom Scale option is enabled, enter a specific scale in its associated field. In the latter case, the scaling of the view is relative to 1, so the value of 0.9 represents a scale of 90%.

Where supported, the scale of a placed view can also be changed graphically. To do this, select the view and Click, Hold&Drag the handle in the top right corner of the selected view. The Use Custom Scale option will be enabled for this view if not already, and the scale value will change accordingly. ()

Defining the Title of a Placed View

To improve the readability of your drawings, you can configure and display title strings of placed views. The title and its properties of a placed view can be changed in the Properties panel using options available in the panel's Title region when the view is selected in the design space.

Use the Title field to define the view's title. The field can include static text and any desired parameters in the form of special strings. Use the =<ParameterName> syntax to include a parameter to the title. Values of included parameters will be shown in the title on the drawing sheet (as shown in the example above, the view's title includes ViewSide and ViewScale parameters).

For a list of available system and PCB parameters, refer to the Setting Up a Draftsman Document page.

To toggle the title's visibility in the drawing, use the  button associated with the Title field.

To change the title's location relative to the view, select the required option from the Location drop-down. Alternatively, Click, Hold&Drag the title in the design space and drop it to a new location. In this case, the Manual option is automatically selected for the title's Location.

To configure the title's font, use options in the Font region.

  • When the Use Document Font option is enabled, the title font used is that defined by the document options (the Document Font entry in the General region of the General tab of the Properties panel when no object is selected in the design space).

  • When the Use Document Font option is disabled, use the provided options to choose the desired font type, size, color, and text attributes.

Support for Embedded Board Arrays

The Draftsman editor supports the PCB editor's embedded board arrays, allowing Draftsman documents to provide drawing details of multiple boards placed as a panel array.

For more information about embedded board arrays in the PCB editor, refer to the Board Panelization page.

When a panelized (embedded array) version of a board design is selected as the source for a Draftsman document (during document creation or, for an existing Draftsman document, in the Properties panel), the board design data is correctly interpreted by Draftsman as a board array. Placed drawing views such as a board assembly view, board fabrication view, or drill drawing view will extract design data from the source board array PCB file.

Note that when a component is selected in a board assembly view, the Component Display Properties settings in the Properties panel (learn more) will apply to that component on all board representations within the array.

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Note

The features available depend on your Altium product access level. Compare features included in the various levels of Altium Designer Software Subscription and functionality delivered through applications provided by the Altium 365 platform.

If you don’t see a discussed feature in your software, contact Altium Sales to find out more.

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