Working with a Table Object on a Draftsman Document in Altium Designer

Parent page: Draftsman Objects

A placed Table with a range of cell formatting.

Summary

A Draftsman Table is a custom table object that can contain any text data. The Table object offers a wide range of text and structure editing features, which can be implemented on a cell row or column basis using standard Shift/Ctrl or drag selection techniques. The table's visual style is configurable in the Properties panel.

Availability

A Table is available for placement in a Draftsman document in the following ways:

• Choose the Place » Table command from the main menu.
• Right-click the Table entry () in the table objects drop-down menu 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 » Table from the context menu.
• Click the Table () entry in the tables drop-down menu () on the Drawing Annotations toolbar (click View » Toolbars » Drawing Annotations to enable).

Placement

Launching the Table command will open the Insert table dialog, where the number of rows and columns for the new table can be specified. After clicking OK in the Insert table dialog, the new table is attached to the cursor and can be placed in the desired location with an additional click.

Graphical Editing

The position of a placed Table may be graphically changed by selecting the table object in the design space then dragging it to a new location using its Move handle, i.e. the icon at the top-left corner. Note that the table cannot be graphically resized, but will automatically scale to accommodate the font and cell/column properties as specified in the Properties panel.

Drag a selected table's Move icon to reposition it in the design space. Right-click in a cell to access row/column manipulation options.

Content is added to a Table by typing or pasting into a cell. Use the Shift+Enter keys to add a new line within a cell.

Special strings are supported within table cells. Project, System, PCB and User Parameters will be converted to their values when entered as a Special String in the table cells. Draftsman document Parameters are accessible under the Parameters tab in the Properties panel when in Document Options mode.

When pasting Special Strings into a spreadsheet from Draftsman, the target cells will be populated with the string’s interpreted Value. Similarly, when pasting Special String data from a spreadsheet into Draftsman, the pasted text will be interpreted as a Special String Value – providing the Special String is matched to an available System, Project or User parameter.

When preparing Special String entries in a spreadsheet, you will need to prefix each Value entry with an apostrophe, so the cell content will be treated as text data. For example, the special string for the Units parameter would be entered as:  ‘=DocumentUnits. Alternatively, all spreadsheet cells could be set to Text format.

Further Table editing options are available by right-clicking in a cell (or selected group of cells) then selecting the Table commands from the context menu. The commands allow rows or columns to be added or deleted, and cells to be merged or un-merged. Note that a launched command will apply to the currently selected cell(s).

Non-Graphical Editing

Properties page: Table Properties

The non-graphical method of editing a Table is available in the Draftsman Properties panel, which provides a range of editable properties and style settings for placed Draftsman objects.

The Properties panel when a Table is selected.

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

• After selecting the Table 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 Table object in the design space.
• Right-click on the Table then select Item Properties from the context menu.

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

Editing Multiple Objects

The Properties panel supports multiple object editing, where the property settings that are identical in all currently selected objects can be modified.