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 design space.
• Right-click in the drawing design space 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 Board 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 Board Assembly View may be graphically modified.

A selected Board 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 a Board Assembly View, drag and drop it to a new location.

Drag a selected Assembly View's resize node to 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: Board Assembly View Properties

The non-graphical method of editing a Board 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 Board Assembly View:

• After selecting the Board Assembly View object, select the Properties panel from the Panels button at the bottom right of the design space or select View » Panels » Properties from the main menus.
• Double-click on the Board Assembly View object in the design space.
• Right-click on the Board Assembly View then select Item Properties from the context menu.

If the Properties panel is already active, click on the Board Assembly View object to access its properties in the panel.