FW: Altium Layer Stackup Proposal

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Brooks, Bill

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Feb 23, 2012, 1:22:20 PM2/23/12

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Since we are getting together today, I wanted to update the group on what we have talked about for standards in the way we use Altium.

Below are some cut and pasted suggestions… maybe this can spur some dialog about the subject amongst us… J

Bill Brooks

Leslie’s Gomez’s suggestion:

The ones we use here…

Brad Sales and Dave Carmody’s suggestions:

Altium Layer Structure Proposition

The purpose of this document is to propose an enhancement to the Altium Layer Manager and the View Configurations. This enhancement would seriously increase designer efficiency as it is currently standard practice to do a repetitive naming on each job. Repetitive naming is sometimes even done on the same job as the layer stackup changes through the design process.

The current Layer Stackup Manager is shown with the proposed enhancements in the highlighted areas…

The areas highlighted are as follows.
1. Layer Extension Prefix – This would allow a single prefix to drop in front of the layer name for each layer. A wildcard would be used to denote the layer number in descending order. No longer would the designer need to type “L1-Top” as an example. The prefix L#- would append to the layer name Top and the entire layer name would push through.
2. Prefix Output – This area would show the prefix name along with the layer assigned so that the full layer name is better represented.
3. Pressing OK would set the full layer names in place so that the layer name would display properly in the View Configuration, Color Tabs, Special Strings, etc.

Further, an update to the View Configurations dialog would be very helpful in eliminating repetitive tasks.

The current View Configuration is shown with the proposed enhancements in the highlighted areas…
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The areas highlighted are as follows.
1. Signal Layers/Internal Planes – The layer names would fully transfer from the Layer Stackup Manager into these areas. All other normal function would be retained.
2. Layer Pairs – Remove the Layer pairs button and add a Layer Pairs column. The column would link the pairs though a simple numeric assignment. This change would allow the Layer Pairs to be saved, loaded and configured through the Mechanical Presets enhancement listed in item 3.
3. Mechanical Presets – Create a new drop down menu button where some Altium Preset Mechanical Layer names could be utilized. Also include Save and Load selections so that the preset names could be saved off and re-loaded at will.

A couple sample Preset Configurations are listed below…

IPC Library Preset                        Single Board Preset
M13 – Assembly Top                        M1 – Titleblock
M14 – Assembly Bottom                     M2 – Board Outline
M15 – Courtyard Top                       M3 – Board Reference
M16 – Courtyard Bottom

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