Altium Designer: Generate PDF that shows component location?

[JohnG300c]

Hello, I'm having some boards assembled and the PCB house wants to verify that the pick and place file is correct. They are asking for a PDF that shows all the component location on the board. I have not found such an option in Altium Designer. Can anyone give me a hint?

Thanks,
/John.

 

[House_Cat]

Re: Altium Designer: Generate PDF that shows component locat

What they are looking for is called an assembly drawing. You can print one from an OutJob file, or from File>>Assembly Outputs>>Assembly Drawings.

 

[JohnG300c]

@ltium Designer: Generate PDF that shows component location?

Thanks house Cat. The problem is that the components in question are some 100 decoupling capacitors under my FPGA. These do not have any silk screen outline, just the pads. Because of the small footprint they also don't have any designators (C1, C2 etc). The idea is that since i'm using three types of decoupling capacitors, all with different footprints, the parts would only fit in the correct location.

I was under the assumption that the pick and place file would be sufficient to place the decoupling capacitors. How is this normally handled?

 

[House_Cat]

Re: Altium Designer: Generate PDF that shows component locat

You are correct that placement is normally handled through the pick and place file. If you are using several different values of bypass caps with different footprints, perhaps all they need is a closeup picture of the bottom of the board under the FPGA which shows the capacitor footprints.

You can do that in the PCB Editor by flipping the board, zoom in to a convenient size, and then select "Print Screen Region" from the Print command menu.

 

[ssankurathri]

Re: Altium Designer: Generate PDF that shows component locat

hi housecat,

am new to @ltium. I started routing my board. I want to do some sections manually.so, i did quarter of my board manually. Now, i want to use the autorouting option.
while doing manual routing, i splitted the power plane and ground plane.
the problem is the tool gets hanged up when i use autorouting on this partially done board.

I want the manual routed portion of the board to be undisturbed, ( in anyway) and the tool has to do autorouting for the remaining board.

could you please help me in this. coz i already spent lot of time on this, but couldn't find a clue.

regards
skr

 

[JohnG300c]

@ltium Designer: Generate PDF that shows component location?

Thanks House cat. I ended up selecting the various component types in the PCB editor, taking screen shots and mailing jpgs. This seemed to be the clearest way to identify unmarked components.

Thank for your help.

 

[House_Cat]

Re: @ltium Designer: Generate PDF that shows component locat

hi housecat,

am new to @ltium. I started routing my board. I want to do some sections manually.so, i did quarter of my board manually. Now, i want to use the autorouting option.
while doing manual routing, i splitted the power plane and ground plane.
the problem is the tool gets hanged up when i use autorouting on this partially done board.

I want the manual routed portion of the board to be undisturbed, ( in anyway) and the tool has to do autorouting for the remaining board.

could you please help me in this. coz i already spent lot of time on this, but couldn't find a clue.

regards
skr

- What version of Altium Designer are you using?

- What do you mean it gets "hanged up"?

- How big is your board (physical size and number of nets)?

 

[ssankurathri]

Re: Altium Designer: Generate PDF that shows component locat

hi housecat,

am using altium version 6. the board dimensions are around 3x4 inches.
nets are around 90.
i hope u got my question.
i did one-fourth of board manually. now i want to do remaining board auto-routed.
how to do this?

In auto-route, i checked the option lock pre-routes. When i say 'hangs up', i mean it is taking time in minutes to start the routing.

regards
skr

 

[House_Cat]

Re: Altium Designer: Generate PDF that shows component locat

That's a pretty small board. It should route fairly quickly.

If it's taking a long time to start, it could indicate that you have set your design rules with such limiting values that the autorouter is having difficulty finding routes. The other thing that can cause the autorouter to fail is the lack of a "keepout" outline around the outside edge of your board. The autorouter needs that to tell it what the limits are for the routable area.

The first thing you should do is lock your preroutes as you have done. You can also protect your preroutes by putting the routed nets in a net class, and then writing a routing layer design rule that assigns that net class to no layers for routing.

If you have the keepout outline, you've set up the design rules with reasonable clearance and routing layer rules, and the routing strategy is reasonable, you should just start the autorouter and leave it alone for a while to see what happens.

 

[nishal]

@ltium Designer: Generate PDF that shows component location?

Hi JohnG300c,
To show the designator in pdf, Use Smart PDF under File menu, Click next button until you get 'Additional bookmark settings'. Click on 'Generate nets information' check box. This will create bookmark for component designators and nets.

Open created pdf, on 'bookmark' panel, expand all the headings and there you will find designators and net titles. On selecting a designator name pdf window fill pan to the selected component.

Hope this helps

Nishal

 

[JohnG300c]

@ltium Designer: Generate PDF that shows component location?

Thanks Nishal, i will give it a try.

/John.

 

[KP]

Re: Altium Designer: Generate PDF that shows component locat

R u talking 'smart'?
Smart PDF by Altium

Experince it by seeing video clip attached