Altium: Rotate PCB view? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: evidere
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: May 14, 2017, 02:18:16 am
content: Hi all,This might be a stupid question. But, is there a way to rotate the PCB view either during the PCB layout or afterwards?I've scoured the web for an answer but it seems like Altium does not have this feature. I don't want to re-define the board shape and rotate, all I want is to simply rotate the view of the PCB as it is.Comes in handy when viewing complex designs or during routing.Thank you!

author: plazma
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 14, 2017, 10:53:13 am
content: You can flip/mirror so you can see the bottom layer correctly.

author: evidere
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: May 14, 2017, 03:26:19 pm
content: I know of that feature. I was thinking more of the 90, 180, 270 degrees turns on the origin.

author: julianhigginson
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 15, 2017, 01:23:55 am
content: rotate your monitor?

author: pigrew
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 15, 2017, 01:45:21 am
content: Draftsman can show rotated views, but I think it cannot superimpose multiple layers.

author: electricar
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 18, 2017, 06:09:17 am
content: You can mirror it with V B (View, Flip Board)

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 18, 2017, 06:41:49 am
content: This is one area where altium sucks.Especially for flex pcbs.Not being able to rotate the pcb to make angled pcbs flat is real anoying

author: NEYi
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: June 17, 2018, 05:33:14 pm
content: Hey folks, I've just figured it out!Well, there's no direct feature for rotating the board in 2D mode, that's not news... But it turned out you can do it, and it's not a huge pain in the ass.Simply – just select everything using mouse, drag it a little away and press the "space" key.Whole freaking board rotates by 90 degrees easily. Took me 2 years of laying out PCBs to figure it.Yeah, of course Altium thinks you've just rotated the components and board shape is still the same.Well, that can be easily fixed by selecting flipped outline and defining new board shape.Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

author: julianhigginson
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 23, 2018, 12:54:59 am
content: What software does this? I've never seen this feature, or considered it before... but it sounds like it'd actually be nice.

author: NEYi
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: June 23, 2018, 02:34:52 am
content: julianhigginson, there's no external software involved.If you need to rotate the whole board – you just select everything your board has(components, silk, lines, etc) and rotate them, same as you would do with separate components or board section.Then you re-define the board shape using "define from selected objects" – should be easy since the outline rotates as well.

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 23, 2018, 02:43:06 am
content: It seems that if you select everything Altium treats this differently to a normal selection and if you then rotate the selection it will also rotate the PCB itself too.

author: NEYi
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: June 23, 2018, 04:43:22 pm
content: I'm not sure whether it's a feature or not – Altium indeed rotates the "black background" as well, but not the dotted line that usually indicates board shape, it stays where it's been and you have to re-define shape to get black background and dotted line together.Here how it looks like if you'll just select everything and rotate without re-defining:Also – Altium does not rotate the origin, and it should be manually moved as well.Dunno, to me there should've been a feature in "Move" options, like "Rotate board...", but there isn't any and I couldn't find any documentation regarding "select all" working differently to select section.Oh well, but at least there's a way to rotating boards after all – even it's not an official one.

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 23, 2018, 06:18:58 pm
content: Y'mean like the PCB outline itself? That's probably obscure, because you can't normally select it by clicking. But you can with an area select.You don't get locked objects with a CTRL+A (and no, the outline is not a locked object, by default anyway), so be careful with moving or rotating things this way. If you aren't using locked objects, it's fine -- but, you should probably consider locking large and bothersome objects from time to time, it's helpful.Incidentally, querying All isn't a good idea either, or it wasn't -- that selects objects that are part of other objects. I remember being perplexed back on AD09 where doing this would move everything relative to their components, plus the components; so non-free objects got double moved, and footprints all got screwed up! (I think this was fixed, but I try to avoid activating it anyway.)Tim

author: julianhigginson
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 24, 2018, 01:19:17 am
content: Quote from: NEYi on June 23, 2018, 02:34:52 amI'm talking about just rotating the view, as OP described... Not the actual PCB design.Sometimes when routing something complex I like to view mirror image, just to see a different perspective. This would be an alternative to that.