KB: Convert a Fill or Region into a Polygon
Altium Designer
When I try to create a polygon from the outline of overlapping shapes using Fills and Regions it does not work. When I try to run the command it tells me it cannot find an enclosed shape (Tracks, Arcs, Full Circle) and when I click YES nothing happens. How can I get this to work?
Solution Details
The Convert to Polygon command only works when tracks / arcs / lines / etc... are highlighted, other primitives such as Fills / regions / etc... are not considered as enclosed primitives, so the command would not work for these objects. You would need to recreate the shape using tracks.
A workaround is to:
1. Create a polygon around the fill
2. Create a design rule for clearance of Polygons to be 0, you would want the polygon to pour as close as possible to the fill
3. Open the properties for the Polygon and set the Pour properties to None
4. Repour the polygon, this should create an outline of your polygon
5. From here, go to: Tools ► Convert ► Explode Polygon to Free Primitives
6. Delete your fill, you should see an outline remain
7. Select the tracks of the remaining outline
8. Run the Tools ► Convert ► Create Polygon
9. Delete the remaining outlines
10. Remember to delete the Polygon clearance rule.
Here's documentation that may be of interest:
https://www.altium.com/documentation/altium-designer/pcb-cmd-convertselectedconvertselected-ad
https://www.altium.com/documentation/altium-designer/pcb-cmd-groupprimitivesgroupprimitives-ad