Net Color Synchronization

Altium Designer now includes additional net highlighting color options for easy viewing and review of your schematic and PCB design. Users can now highlight multiple nets, differentiate different nets with different colors, and push highlighting from schematic to PCB and vice versa. The highlighting feature now assigns color to the entire net in the schematic instead of only coloring the selected wire.

These highlighting colors are included in the ECO process when transferring the schematic to PCB or vice versa. When the schematic is Compiled and an ECO is generated, the report will show the nets that have colors assigned to them and acceptance of the change(s) will cause the colors in the PCB to be changed as well. 

Change Net Color changes have been validated.

For Change Net Colors to be visible in the Engineering Change Order dialog, you must have Changed Net Colors set to Find Differences on the Comparator tab of the Project Options dialog.

Changed Net Colors has been updated from Ignore Differences to Find Differences.

Additionally, Net Color Override must be selected in the PCB for these color changes to be visible in your PCB document. The Net Color Override feature can be accessed from the Net Colors drop down menu, through the F5 shortcut, or by selecting View » Net Color Override from the toolbar. Net Color Override can also be set from the Schematic - Graphical Editing page of the Preferences dialog. If Net Color Override is not selected before attempting to highlight nets, the Net Color Override dialog will appear, prompting you to enable Net Color Override before highlighting net colors.

Where is it?

In the schematic, you can access the net highlighting tools in the following ways:

• From the toolbar, click and select a color from the drop down menu.
• From the menu, select View » Set Net Colors.

Select a color or select Custom to open the Choose Color dialog and use a non-default color. After selecting a color, the cursor will appear as a cross hair. Select your desired net to highlight. Multiple nets can be highlighted in the same or different colors. Right-click to exit the highlighting mode.

To remove color highlighting from a net, click and select Clear Net Color. Use the cross hair cursor to select the net you wish to remove highlighting from. Alternatively, to remove colors from all highlighted nets, click and select Clear All Net Colors.

When you transfer the design from your schematic to your PCB, the highlighted nets will retain their unique highlighting colors.