Working with a Board Assembly View Object on a Draftsman Document in Altium Designer

Parent page: Draftsman Objects

A placed board Assembly View set to the Top view side.

Summary

A Draftsman Board Assembly View is an automated graphic composite of the active PCB project's board outline, cutouts, holes, and component graphics with additional notation. Its drawing representation, included information and data sources are all configurable in the Properties panel.

Availability

Board Assembly Views are available for placement in a PCB project Draftsman document from the Draftsman Editor as follows:

• Choose the Place » Board Assembly View command from the main menus (Place Board Assembly View).
• Click the button on the Active Bar located at the top of the workspace.
• Right-click in the drawing workspace then select Place » Board Assembly View from the context menu.
• Click the  entry on the Drawing Views toolbar (View » Toolbars » Drawing Views to enable).

Placement

After launching the command, drawing data is retrieved from the source PCB file, the cursor will change to a cross-hair and the rendered Assembly View is attached to the cursor. Move the cursor to the desired position then click to confirm the placement.

Graphical Editing

Both the position and size of placed Assembly View may be graphically modified.

A selected Assembly View will show a node handle at the top right of the selection outline, which can be dragged to a new location to modify the view's size. To move an Assembly View, drag and drop it to a new location.

Drag a selected Assembly View's resize node change its scale.

The position of component Designators also can be graphically modified by dragging and dropping the text to a new location. Hold the Ctrl key while dragging then use the Space bar to rotate the Designator through 90° increments.

► Designator move example.

Non-Graphical Editing

Properties page: Assembly View Properties

The non-graphical method of editing an Assembly View is available in the Draftsman Properties panel, which provides a comprehensive range of editable properties, options and design content settings for placed Draftsman views.

The Properties panel when a Board Assembly View is selected, and component 162A selected in the view.

To open the Properties panel and access the properties of a placed Assembly View:

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

If the Properties panel is already active:

• Click on the Assembly View 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.