Defining Projects Panel Preferences for Altium Designer

Summary

The System – Projects Panel page of the Preferences dialog provides controls relating to the behavior of the Projects panel.

Access

This page is accessed by clicking Projects Panel under the System folder in the main Preferences dialog (accessed by clicking  at the top right corner of the design space).

Options/Controls

• General 
  • Show VCS status - check this option to show the status of the document in respect to the version control system (checked out or checked in).
  • Show document position in project - check this option to show the document position relative to the project, indexed by a number in parentheses.
  • Show full path information in hint - check this option to include full path information in the tip when the cursor hovers over a document name on the Projects panel.
  • Show Automatic Sheet Numbering - enable to display the automatic sheet numbering of documents in the Projects panel.
• File View 
  • Show Project Structure - check this option to show the structure of intra-projects (consisting of sheets and sheet symbols) and inter-projects (connections between projects and the components that link them) if the File View option is selected on the Projects panel. 
  • Show Document Structure - check this option to show the structure of opened projects and sub-projects if the File View option is selected on the Projects panel. 
• Documents Grouping
  • Do not group - select this option if you do not want the project documents within a project listed as groups.
  • By class - select this option to list project documents in document classes: source documents, library documents and generated documents.
  • By document type - select this option if you want to group project documents according to their document type. For example, output documents will be listed under the Output Job Files folder.
• Components Grouping
  • ​Do not group - select this option if you do not want the components within a project listed as groups.
  • By designator's first character - group components by the component designator's first character.
  • By comment - group components by their comments.
  • By owner sheet - group components by their owner sheets.
• Sorting 
  • Project order - select this option if you want project documents sorted according to the order they were added to the project.
  • Alphabetically - select this option if you want the project documents sorted alphabetically.
  • Open/modified status - select this option if you want the project documents sorted according to the status they are in, i.e. opened documents, edited documents, and unopened documents.
  • VCS Status - select this option if you want the project documents sorted according to whether they are logged as checked out, checked in or as standalone documents from a version control system.
  • ​Ascending - check this option if you want the project documents to appear in ascending order.
• Single Click 
  • Does nothing - select this option to cause a single click on the Projects panel to do nothing.
  • Activates open documents / objects - select this option if you want a single click on a document in the Projects panel to bring to the front a currently open design document.
  • Opens and shows documents / object - select this option if you want a single click on a document in the Projects panel to open this document in the design space.
• Default Expansion

• Fully contracted - select this option to show only project titles.
• Expanded one level - select this option to show only projects and their top-level documents. 
• Source files expanded - select this option to show only source documents (such as schematic documents) of a project. Other document types, such as output job files and database link file folders will remain contracted. 
• Fully expanded - select this option to show all files of open projects.