Search In: Doc:Documentation: Altium Designer
Altium DesignerAltium 365Altium MCAD CoDesignerAltium On-Prem Enterprise ServerAltium CircuitMakerAltium CircuitStudioCompany DashboardAltium Infrastructure ServerAltium Developer Center
Product Close
Search Search on Documentation

Simple Placement

Updated: October 07, 2026

At a Glance

This article walks you through the basic ways to place and adjust components on a PCB in Altium Designer, including how to select, move, rotate, flip, and delete components directly in the design space. It also explains helpful placement behavior such as movement constraints, rotation settings, designator and comment orientation, and the correct way to flip a component to the other side of the board without accidentally mirroring it. You will also see how connection lines support placement by making related parts easier to locate and orient, plus how to change net line display modes to reduce visual clutter while you work. If you want a clear refresher on the core placement actions and the visual tools that make them easier, keep reading.

- Learn the essential keyboard and mouse actions for selecting, moving, rotating, flipping, and deleting PCB components.
- Understand the difference between flipping a component to the other side of the board and mirroring it on the same side.
- See how connection lines and net line display modes can help you place components more efficiently and with less on screen clutter.
Go Deeper with AI:

A component can be moved, rotated, and flipped in the PCB design space. To do this, select the required component in the design space by clicking on it. A selected component is highlighted in the current selection color, as shown in the image below.

Click once to select a component.Click once to select a component.

  • Click, hold and drag to move the selected component. The cursor will jump to the component reference point, or the nearest pad center if the Smart Component Snap option is enabled on the PCB Editor - General page of the Preferences dialog. Press the Alt key to constrain the direction of movement to the horizontal or vertical axis depending on the initial direction of movement.

  • While a component is moving on the cursor press the Spacebar to rotate it (Shift+Spacebar to rotate in the other direction). The default rotation step is 90 degrees. To change this setting, use the Rotation Step value in the PCB Editor - General page of the Preferences dialog.

    If the component is being rotated, the Designator and Comment strings can be configured to hold their orientation, or to rotate with the footprint. This behavior is controlled by the Autoposition setting for these strings. The defaults can be set by editing the default Component on the PCB Editor - Defaults page of the Preferences dialog. Note that setting the default will not affect any components that have already been placed.

  • While a component is moved on the cursor, press the L key to flip it to the other side of the board.

    Do not use the X or Y keys as this will mirror the component but not change its layer. If you use the X or Y keyboard shortcut to mirror a component (or a room containing a component), a warning dialog is presented that asks you to explicitly confirm that mirroring on the same side of the board is what you mean to do. By default, the No button is highlighted, making it more of a conscious decision to click Yes to proceed with the mirroring (). Components with mirrored footprints can be detected by the PCB Health Check Monitor tool and when updating footprints from libraries.

  • Press Delete to remove the selected component from the PCB.

The connection lines are an excellent aid during component placement to help locate and orient components that are connected to each other. As you move the component, connection lines are dynamically optimized so that every connection line follows the shortest path to any other object with the same net name.

Use the connection lines to help locate and orient the components.
Use the connection lines to help locate and orient the components.

To help reduce visual clutter, as you move a component all connection lines are hidden, except the connection lines connected to that component. Press the N key to cycle through net line connect modes. The following modes are supported:

  • Pad to Pad - during the move, connection lines are displayed between pads of the component being moved and the nearest pads of the same nets on the board.
  • Breaks - during the move, connection lines are displayed between pads of the component being moved and the track breaks of the same nets on the board.
  • Hidden - connection lines are hidden.

Current net line connect mode is shown in the Status Bar and the Heads Up Display.

If you find an issue, select the text/image and pressCtrl + Enterto send us your feedback.
Nav
Contents
Feature Availability

The features available to you depend on which Altium solution you have – Altium Develop, Altium Agile Teams, Altium Agile Enterprise, or Altium Designer (on active term).

If you don’t see a documented feature in your actual software, contact Altium Sales to find out more.

Legacy Documentation

Altium Designer documentation is no longer versioned. If you need to access documentation for older versions of Altium Designer, visit the Legacy Documentation section of the Other Installers page.