3.1.1 Menus
The menus are located at the top of the Layout area. Most, but not all,
of their functions are also available from the keyboard. Similarly, some
functions are only achievable through the keyboard or command entry.
Some menu entries such as center layout in the Screen menu require a certain cross hair position.
In this case a prompt message will popup at the bottom of the screen
with wording similar to the following:
move pointer to the appropriate screen position and press a button
Any mouse button will do the job, whereas any key except the arrow (cursor) keys
will cancel the operation. If it seems like the menu hasn't done what you
expected, check to see if it is waiting for the position click. For details see Actions.
Pressing Btn3 in the Layout area also pops up a menu with many of the most common operations (except
when you're in the midst of drawing a line or arc). When
a choice in the Btn3 popup menu needs a cross hair position, it uses the position
where the cross hair was when Btn3 was pressed. For example, to get detailed
information on an object, place the cross hair over the object, press Btn3, then
choose object report. If you pop up the Btn3 menu but don't want to
take any of the actions, click on one of the headers in the menu.
- File
- This menu offers a choice of loading, saving and printing data, saving
connection information to a file or quitting the application. Most
of the entries in the File menu are self explanatory.
Selecting
print layout pops up a printer control dialog.
A selection of several device drivers is available from the printer control
dialog. Presently PostScript, encapsulated PostScript,
and GerberX are supported. The GerberX driver produces
all of the files necessary to have the board professionally manufactured.
The connection saving features in the File menu produce outputs in an
arcane format that is not too useful. They do not produce netlist
files.
- Edit
- The Edit menu provides the usual cut, copy, paste
which work on selections. To learn how to
create complex selections, see Arrow Tool.
The Edit menu also
provides access to Undo and Redo of the last operation. These
can also be accomplished with the U key and Shift-R
key. Finally, the Edit menu allows you to change the names
of: the layout, the active layer, or text objects on the layout.
- Screen
- The Screen menu supports most functions related to
the whole Layout area. There are various entries to change the grid to some popular
values, the zoom factor, and which kind of element name is displayed.
You can also re-align the grid origin and turn on and off the display
of the grid.
Before changing the grid alignment, I recommend that you zoom in as close as
possible so that you're sure the grid
points appear exactly where you want them.
The Screen menu also allows you to turn on and off the
visibility of the solder-mask layer. When the solder-mask layer
is made visible it obscures most of the layout, so only turn
this on when you really want to know what the solder-mask will
look like. The solder-mask that you see belongs to the
side of the board you are viewing, which can be changed with
the view solder side option, also found in the Screen menu.
When the solder-mask is displayed, the pin and pad clearance adjustments
(see Line Objects) alter the size of mask cut-outs.
- Sizes
- The Sizes menu allows you to select a group of line thickness, via diameter, via drill
size, and clearance (keepaway) (collectively called a "routing style") to be copied to the "active" sizes.
You can also change the names given to the routing styles and adjust their values from
this menu. The "active" sizes are also adjustable from this menu.
The "active" sizes are shown in the status-line and control the initial size of new vias,
drilling holes, lines, clearances, text-objects and also the maximum dimensions of the
board layout.
- Settings
- The Settings menu controls several operating configuration
parameters. The edit layer groups entry brings up a dialog
that allows you to change the way layers are grouped. Layer grouping
is described in Layer Objects. The all-direction lines
entry controls
the clipping of lines to 45-degree angles. You can also control
whether moving individual objects causes the attached lines to
"rubber band" with the move or not from the Settings menu. Another
entry controls whether the starting clip angle for the two-line
mode (see Line Objects) alternates every other line. You can
also control whether element names must be unique from the Settings
menu. When unique element names are enforced, copying a new element
will automatically create a unique layout-name name for it
provided that the name originally ended with a digit (e.g.
U7 or R6). The Settings menu allows you to control
whether the cross hair will snap to pins and pads even when they
are off-grid. Finally you can control whether new lines and
arcs touch or clear intersecting polygons from this menu.
- Select
- This menu covers most of the operations that work with selected objects.
You may either (un)select all visible objects on a layout or only the ones
which have been found by the last connection scan see
.
You can delete all selected objects from this menu.
Other entries in the Select menu change the sizes of selected objects.
Note that a select action only affects those objects that are
selected and have their visibility turned on in the Layer Control
panel. The Select menu also provides a means for selecting objects
by name using unix Regular Expressions.
- Buffer
- From the Buffer menu you may select one out of five
buffers to use, rotate or clear its contents or save the buffer contents
to a file. You can also use the break buffer element to pieces entry
to de-compose an element into pieces for editing.
Note: only objects with visibility turned on are pasted to the layout. If
you have something in a buffer, then change which side of the board you
are viewing, the contents of the buffer will automatically be mirrored
for pasting on the side you are viewing. It is not necessary to clear
a buffer before cutting or copying something into it - it will automatically
be cleared first.
- Connects
- The entries available through the Connects menu allow you to find
connections from objects and to manipulate these.
You can also optimize or erase rat's nests from this menu. Finally,
the auto-route all rats entry allows you to auto-route
all connections show by the rat's nest. The auto-router will use
any visible copper layer for routing, so turn off the visibility of any
layers you don't want it to use. The auto-router will automatically
understand and avoid any traces that are already on the board, but
it is not restricted to the grid. Finally,
the auto-router routes using the active sizes (except for nets that
have a route-style defined).
Pcb
always knows which tracks
were routed by the auto-router, and you can selectively remove them
without fear of changing tracks that you have manually routed
with the rip-up all auto-routed tracks entry in the Connects
menu. The design rule checker entry runs a check for copper
areas that are too close together, or connections that touch too
tenuously for reliable production. The DRC stops when the first
problem is encountered so after fixing a problem be sure to
run it again until no problems are found.
Warning: COPPER TEXT IS IGNORED BY THE DRC CHECKER.
- Info
- The generate object report entry from the Info menu
provides a way to get detailed information
about an object, such as its coordinates, dimensions, etc.
You can also get a report summarizing all of the drills
used on the board with generate drill summary. Lastly,
you can get a list of all pins, pads and vias that were
found during a connection search.
- Window
- The Window menu provides a way to bring each of
Pcb's
windows to the front. The Library window is used to
bring elements from the library into the paste-buffer. The
Message Log window holds the various messages that
Pcb
sends to the user. The Netlist window shows
the list of connections desired.
Now that you're familiar with the various menus, it's time
to try some things out. From the File menu choose
load layout, navigate to the tutorial folder, then
load the file tut1.pcb.