Working with a Drill Drawing View Object on a Draftsman Document in Altium NEXUS

Created: October 13, 2021 | Updated: October 13, 2021

Contents

Summary
Availability
Placement
Graphical Editing
Non-Graphical Editing
- Editing Multiple Objects

A placed board Drill Drawing View set to the Top view side

Summary

A Draftsman Board Drill Drawing View is an automated graphic composite of the active PCB project's board outline and drill holes. The view is rendered with definable symbols that correspond to hole types and also includes any specified drill layer pairs.

The view's drawing representation and content settings are all configurable in the Properties panel.

Availability

Board Drill Drawing Views are available for placement in the Draftsman Editor as follows:

Choose the Place » Additional Views » Board Drill Drawing View command from the main menus.
Click the button in the view objects drop-down on the Active Bar located at the top of the design space. Click and hold an Active Bar button to access other related commands. Once a command has been used, it will become the topmost item on that section of the Active Bar.
Right-click in the drawing design space then select Place » Additional Views » Board Drill Drawing View from the context menu.
Click the entry on the Drawing Views toolbar (View » Toolbars » Drawing Views to enable).

Placement

After launching the command, drawing data is retrieved from the source PCB file, the cursor will change to a cross-hair and the rendered Drill Drawing View is attached to the cursor. Move the cursor to the desired position then click to confirm the placement.

Note that drawing data is retrieved from the PCB document specified in the Source section of the Properties panel when in Document Options mode. To change the panel to that mode, deselect all objects in the design space (click in free space).

Graphical Editing

Both the position and size of placed Drill Drawing View may be graphically modified.

A selected Drill Drawing View will show a node handle at the top right of the selection outline, which can be dragged to a new location to modify the view's size. To move an Drill Drawing View, drag and drop it to a new location.

Drag a selected Drill Drawing View's resize node change its scale.

The default settings for the Board Drill Drawing View are available in the Draftsman - Defaults page of the Preferences dialog.

Non-Graphical Editing

Properties page: Drill Drawing View Properties

The non-graphical method of editing an Drill Drawing View is available in the Draftsman Properties panel, which provides a comprehensive range of editable properties, options and design content settings for placed Draftsman views.

The Properties panel when a Board Drill Drawing View is selected.

To open the Properties panel and access the properties of a placed Drill Drawing View:

After selecting the Drill Drawing View object, select the Properties panel from the Panels button at the bottom right of the design space or select View » Panels » Properties from the main menus.
Double-click on the Drill Drawing View object in the design space.
Right-click on the Drill Drawing View then select Item Properties from the context menu.

If the Properties panel is already active, click on the Drill Drawing View object to access its properties in the panel.

The Drill Drawing View properties can be accessed prior to entering placement mode from the Draftsman - Defaults page of the Preferences dialog. This allows the default properties for the Drill Drawing View object to be changed, which will be applied when placing subsequent Drill Drawing Views.

Editing Multiple Objects

The Properties panel supports multiple object editing, where the property settings that are identical in all currently selected objects can be modified.