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

Parent page: Draftsman Objects

Placed Board Section Views in the horizontal and vertical planes for a Board Assembly View.

Summary

A Draftsman board Board Section View is an automated graphic composite that provides a profile slice, or sectional, drawing taken from a nominated 'cut' point through a placed Board Assembly View. It processes the available 3D data from the current PCB to generate a standalone section or slice drawing that is aligned to the nominated cut point.

Any number of Section Views can be created from an Assembly View, and its drawing representation style, view direction and labeling are all configurable in the Properties panel.

Availability

Board Section Views are available when an Assembly View (set to Top or Bottom View mode) has been placed in a PCB project Draftsman document. Access the Board Section View placement command from the Draftsman Editor as follows:

• Choose the Place » Additional Views » Board Section View command from the main menus (Place Board Section View).
• Click the button in the view objects drop-down on the Active Bar located at the top of the design space. Click and hold an Active Bar button to access other related commands. Once a command has been used, it will become the topmost item on that section of the Active Bar.
  
• Right-click in the drawing design space then select Place » Additional Views » Board Section View from the context menu.
• Click the  entry on the Drawing Views toolbar (View » Toolbars » Drawing Views to enable).

Placement

When the command is launched the cursor will change to a crosshair, indicating Section View placement mode. The placement steps are:

1. Position the cursor on the Assembly View, where a vertical cut line will follow the cursor movement – use the Spacebar to toggle between the vertical and horizontal cut line modes.
2. Click to set the position of the cut line.
3. Move the cursor to either side of the line to set the section view direction (as indicated by the cut line arrows) and click to confirm.
4. Drag and place the new Section View graphic to the desired location in the design space.

Graphical Editing

The position, size and target point of a placed Section View may be graphically modified when it has been selected in the design space. The view allows for different modes of graphic editing:

• Select and drag the Section View graphic to change its location.
• Select and drag the Section View's scaling handle (node), located at the top right of its outline, to modify the view's rendered size.
• Select and drag one of the Section View's cutting line nodes to reposition the cut point on the Assembly View. The Section View graphic will be re-rendered to the new 3D board data when the node is released.

Drag a selected Section View or its scaling/cut nodes to modify the view's graphic representation.

Non-Graphical Editing

Properties page: Section View Properties

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

The Properties panel when a Board Section View is selected.

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

• Double-click on the Section View object in the design space.
• Right-click on the Section View then select Item Properties from the context menu.

If the Properties panel is already active:

• Click on the Section View object to access its properties in the panel.

To manually open the Properties panel, select View » Panels » Properties from the main menus or click the button at the bottom right of the design space then select Properties from the pop-up menu.