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Why is Altium not staying away from zones?
If you are finding that when you draw polygons that Altium is not staying the correct distance away from zones you draw on the keep-out layer, you are probably caught by one of Altium’s ‘gotchas’.
How are clearances and connection properties controlled in Altium?
Clearances and connection properties are controlled by the applicable Electrical Clearance and Polygon Connection Style design rules. Select the Place » Polygon Pour command from the main menus to place a polygon on the current layer in the PCB editor.
Where does Altium warn you about acute angles?
Altium will give you warnings about acute angles when the tracks are inside pads (and therefore don’t actually get drawn). This normally occurs in the central pad of SMD IC packages (such as QFN). The solution to this finish tracks just as they enter pads rather then letting them snap to the centre of the pad.
How to remove islands of copper in Altium?
To have the software detect and remove these isolated islands of copper, enable the Remove Dead Copper option. If a polygon pour is placed on a non-signal layer, it will not be poured around existing objects as these objects are not assigned to a net and therefore do not belong to anything.
Is there a bug in Altium layer stack manager?
Altium has a bug where it reports acute angle rule violations of tracks that are under pads. The layer stack manager seems to incorrectly calculate the stack-up height by 1um (O.K., it’s not that important, but still…). See the screen shot below for an example.
What should I keep an eye out for in Altium?
There’s no denying Altium has it’s quirks. If you are getting annoyed with one of Altium’s bugs, submit it to BugCrunch, their bug tracking and fixing sub-site (you can vote on what you want fixed first). Here a some of the things you should keep an eye out for…
How to close Altium when the program crashes?
Closing Altium When It Crashes The easiest way to close Altium when it crashes it to hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete, bring up the task manager, go to the processes tab, and close DXP.exe. This is plenty faster than closing the program Altium.exe from the same task manager (almost instant, rather than 30+ seconds). Quickly closing Altium when it crashes.