Working with a Drill Table Object on a PCB in CircuitMaker

A Drill Table can be placed in the PCB editor only by choosing Home | Board | Drill Table.

After launching the command, a drill table will appear attached to the cursor. Position the table in a suitable location outside the board then click or press Enter to place it.

Additional actions that can be performed during placement while the drill table is still floating on the cursor and before the drill table is anchored are:

• Press the Tab key to pause the placement and access the Drill Table mode of the Inspector panel in which its properties can be changed on the fly. Click the design space pause button overlay () to resume placement.
• Press the Alt key to constrain the direction of movement to the horizontal or vertical axis depending on the initial direction of movement. 

Graphical Editing

Moving a Drill Table

Click and hold anywhere within the drill table then move it to the desired location in the PCB editor design space.

Interactively Resizing a Drill Table

The drill table is automatically sized based on the specified Text Height setting in the Inspector panel, as well as the number of different hole sizes (rows) and the number of defined columns. To interactively resize the table, click once to select it then click and hold on a corner vertex and move to resize as required. Note that interactively resizing the table will also increase/decrease the font size.

Interactively Switching the Layer Pair to Preview

When the board includes layer pairs, the displayed layer pair is controlled by the Layers Pairs option in the Inspector panel.

This chosen layer-pair also can be switched using the:

• PCB editor right-click menu - right-click on the Drill Table then select the required layer-pair in the Drill Table sub-menu as shown in the image below. 

• Layer-pair selection menu accessed via the layer tab at the bottom of the design space as shown in the image below.

Non-Graphical Editing

The following methods of non-graphical editing are available.

This method of editing uses the Inspector panel to modify the properties of a drill table object.

During placement, the Drill Table mode of the Inspector panel can be accessed by pressing the Tab key. Once the Drill Table is placed, all options appear.

After placement, the Drill Table mode of the Inspector panel can be accessed in one of the following ways:

• If the Inspector panel is already open, select the Drill Table object, right-click then choose Properties from the context menu.
• With the drill table selected, click View | PCB | Inspector from the main ribbons.

Controlling the Assignment of Symbols or Characters

Drill Symbols Dialog

The software automatically assigns a symbol for each hole size. This automatic assignment can be overridden if required in the Drill Symbols dialog. Click the Drill Symbols button in the Properties region of the Inspector panel to open the dialog. Use the dialog to assign symbols/letters to hole sizes. The assignments remain consistent for a PCB. 

The grid area displays detailed information about the mapping of a symbol to a hole size. It can be customized by clicking and dragging a column header to change the order of columns and right-clicking on a column header then enabling/disabling the checkbox to show/hide the column.​

To sort the drill symbols, click once on a column heading to sort by that column. A small triangle will appear indicating the current sort direction. Click a second time to reverse the sort direction. 

Click the Grouping button (displayed in the image below) to set which properties are to be used to control the assignment of symbol-to-drill events (holes). Holes are clustered initially by hole size then assigned separate symbols whenever a grouping option that uniquely identifies them is enabled. For example, the design could include a round pad with a 1mm hole and another square pad with a 1mm hole. If Pad Shape is not enabled in Grouping, they will be assigned the same symbol. But if Pad Shape is enabled in Grouping, they will be assigned separate symbols.

There are a total of 15 symbols available in the Symbol drop-down (displayed in the image below). If there are more than 15 different hole sizes in the PCB, letters are automatically assigned.

The 15 pre-defined graphical symbols that are available.

Updating the Drill Table

If there are design changes that introduce changes in the Drill Table, it can be refreshed by selecting it then clicking  in the Inspector panel, as shown below.

Tips

The drill table will appear on all outputs that include the Drill Drawing layer. The image below shows an example of drill drawing output, showing each drill site marked by the symbol that has been assigned to that hole size. This example output also includes the Drill Guide layer, which adds a small cross at each hole site.  

Example output of the Drill Drawing layer showing the Drill Table next to the board, with each drill site marked by the appropriate hole size symbol.

All Drill Table properties are available for editing in the Inspector panel when a placed Drill Table is selected in the design space.

Location 

The  icon to the right of this region must be displayed as  (unlocked) in order to access the below fields. Toggle the lock/unlock icon to change its lock status. 

• (X/Y) - the current X and Y locations of the Drill Table reference point. The reference point is the bottom left corner if Alignment = Bottom, or top left corner if Alignment = Top.
• Rotation - angle in degrees that the Drill Table is rotated.

Properties

• Layer Pairs - the drill table supports multi-layer boards that use layer-pair drilling. Use the drop-down to select:  
  • All Layer Pairs (Composite table) - displays information for all layer pairs.
  • All Layer Pairs (Separate tables) - displays information for each layer pair in a separate table. 

• Top - Bottom Layer - only show the drill holes for just the selected layer pair.

• Text Height - displays the text height; click then enter the required value to edit.

Font Type

• TrueType - select to use fonts available on your PC (in the \Windows\Fonts folder). TrueType fonts offer full Unicode support. By default, the software links to a used TrueType font (they are not stored in the PCB file), which means the same font must be present on each PC to which the design is moved. 
  • Font - use the drop-down to select the desired TrueType font. Use B to bold or I to italicize text.
• Stroke
  • Font - use the drop-down to select the desired Stroke font. Choices are:
    • Default - a simple vector font designed for pen plotting and vector photo plotting. 
    • Sans Serif
    • Serif 
  • Stroke Width - displays the width of the stroke.

• Show Footer - toggle to enable/disable the display of the footer of the table.
• Alignment - the table can be built from the bottom-up (Bottom), or from the top-down (Top). Use this setting to allow for table size changes without impacting surrounding objects in the design space.
• Table Border Width - width of the lines used to create the table border.
• Drill Symbols - click to open the Drill Symbols dialog in which you can assign symbols/letters to hole sizes. Refer to the Drill Symbols Dialog section in the Drill Table section of this page for information regarding this dialog.
•   - click to refresh the table whenever there are design changes that affect the drill table. Note that the table is automatically updated during output generation.

Units

• Primary Units - use the drop-down to set the primary units to either Metric (mm) or Imperial (mil).
• Dual Units - use the drop-down to set the dual units to either Metric (mm) or Imperial (mil). Use the visibility icon () to toggle the visibility of these units in the design space.

Precision

• Primary Precision - use the drop-down to set the required precision (number of digits after the decimal point).
• Dual Precision - use the drop-down to set the dual precision (number of digits after the decimal point).

Columns 

• Grid - displays all column headings (Caption) in the drill table; the Align setting, which repositions contents within the grid; the Width, and the Order in which the information in each column is displayed. To change from ascending to descending order and vice versa, click in the Order column to access a drop-down menu then select the desired order: Asc - ascending or Dsc - descending. 
• Edit Columns - click to open the Columns dialog to add or edit columns to the drill table.