Ellipse

Parent page: Schematic Objects

A placed Ellipse.Summary

An ellipse is a non-electrical drawing primitive that can be placed on a schematic sheet. It can be filled or unfilled.

Availability

Ellipses are available for placement in both Schematic and Schematic Library Editors:

• Schematic Editor - click Home | Graphical Elements |  from the main menus.
• Schematic Library Editor - click Home | Place |  from the main menus.

Placement

After launching the command, the cursor will change to a cross-hair and you will enter ellipse placement mode. Placement is made by performing the following sequence of actions:

1. Click or press Enter to anchor the center of the ellipse.
2. Move the cursor to adjust the horizontal radius of the ellipse, then click or press Enter to set it.
3. Move the cursor to adjust the vertical radius of the ellipse, then click or press Enter to set it and complete placement.
4. Continue placing further ellipses or right-click or press Esc to exit placement mode.

Additional actions that can be performed during placement – while the ellipse is still floating on the cursor, and before the center point of the ellipse is anchored – are:

• Press the Tab key to access an associated properties dialog, from where properties for the ellipse can be changed on-the-fly.
• Press the Alt key to constrain the direction of movement to the horizontal or vertical axis, depending on the initial direction of movement.
• Press the Spacebar to rotate the ellipse counterclockwise or Shift+Spacebar for clockwise rotation. Rotation is in increments of 90°.

Graphical Editing

This method of editing allows you to select a placed ellipse object directly in the workspace and change its size, shape or location graphically.

When an ellipse object is selected, the following editing handles are available:

A selected Ellipse.

• Click and drag A to change the horizontal radius.
• Click and drag B to change the vertical radius.
• Click anywhere on the ellipse – away from editing handles – and drag to reposition it. While dragging, the ellipse can be rotated (Spacebar/Shift+Spacebar) or mirrored (X or Y keys to mirror along the X-axis or Y-axis respectively).

Non-Graphical Editing

The following methods of non-graphical editing are available:

Via an Associated Properties Dialog

Dialog page: Ellipse

This method of editing uses the Ellipse dialog to modify the properties of an ellipse object.

The Ellipse dialog

The dialog can be accessed during placement by pressing the Tab key.

After placement, the dialog can be accessed in one of the following ways:

• Double-click on the placed ellipse object.
• Place the cursor over the ellipse object, right-click then choose Properties from the context menu.

Via an Inspector Panel

Panel pages: SCH Inspector, SCHLIB Inspector

An Inspector panel enables you to interrogate and edit the properties of one or more design objects in the active document.