[SOLVED] Altium summer 2009 Assembly designators

[bklippenstein]

So far I've found that adding a string containing ".designator" to a mechanical layer to each component will allow the production of an assembly drawing.
I have two questions regarding this:

First, is there a way to show or hide these designators on either the top or bottom layer, ie, show only the assembly designators for those components who reside on the top layer, hide the assembly designators for those components who reside on the bottom layer?

Second, is there a way to force Altium to evaluate the string in the normal view, so it actually shows the designator (say C1) instead of ".designator"?

Basically, I end up with this, and it sucks

Thanks a lot for anyone's help.

 

[zula]

-First, is there a way to show or hide these designators on either the top or bottom layer, ie, show only the assembly designators for those components who reside on the top layer, hide the assembly designators for those components who reside on the bottom layer?

-right click the designator anf 'find similar objects' at the opened window choose layers as 'same' and click apply. now open the pcb inspector window. and you will see there 'Hide' button. click it.

regards.

---------- Post added at 13:33 ---------- Previous post was at 13:31 ----------

-Second, is there a way to force Altium to evaluate the string in the normal view, so it actually shows the designator (say C1) instead of ".designator"?

- how can you do that?

 

[bklippenstein]

-right click the designator anf 'find similar objects' at the opened window choose layers as 'same' and click apply. now open the pcb inspector window. and you will see there 'Hide' button. click it.

regards.

That doesn't work for me, all my assembly designators are on the same layer, mechanical 4. I just add them as a string in the component footprint design.
Is there a better way to add the designators for the assembly drawing?

 

[loosemoose]

Under the view option in the PCB there is a "Convert special Strings". you will need to enable it to see the real designator.
Try this query for your .designators to be selected "(ObjectKind = 'Text') And (StringText = '.Designator')". Then you can show/hide them with the inspector.

If you place components on top and bottom layer you will need to create a mechanical layer pair for the assembly layers. Hit"L" and then you will see on the bottom left corner "Layer pair".

 

[bklippenstein]

Thanks a lot, that's exactly what I was looking for.

B