How to change the default settings for vias?

Question

Following the online documentation there are two possibilities to place vias.

1.) Press * key or Shift+Ctrl+Mouse wheel in interactive routing mode. You can choose the favorite via size in the Favorite Interactive Via Sizes dialog pressing Shift+V while routing.

2.) Press V to place a via when not routing. As the documentation says, a default via will be placed.

How do I change the default via settings? When nailing vias into polygons and planes, I am not in interactive routing mode and I do not want to change the settings for every via pressing the TAB key. I also do not want to select all vias with a filter and change the settings afterwards.

Oliver

e14softwareteam · Accepted Answer

Hi Oliver,

From the developers:

-- Tony

The default settings can not be set in the interface of CircuitStudio, however the settings file may be edited manually. This requires a text editor that doesn't add any formatting to the file.

Locate the file named ADVPCB.DFT in the following folder, with a name similar to:

C:\Users\(WINDOWS USER)\AppData\Roaming\Altium\CircuitStudio {XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX}

(A shortcut to locating this is to use %APPDATA%\Altium\ in Windows Explorer).

Please Quit CircuitStudio and then back up the file, in case it is damaged during the editing process.

Open ADVPCB.DFT in a text editor and locate the lines starting with:

RECORD=Pad|

RECORD=Via|

Then look along the length of the line to locate the settings to edit. For example, the XSIZE and YSIZE are in Pads and the DIAMETER and HOLESIZE are in the Vias.

The settings are all stored in imperial (mil, i.e. 1000th of an Inch), even if your board is in Metric.

See the example screenshot to see that the settings have been edited to:

Pad:

XSIZE=33mil|YSIZE=44mil

Via:

DIAMETER=31mil|HOLESIZE=21mil

And see the metric Equivalent displayed in the Pad dialog. The Pad dialog has a Shortcut key Ctrl+Q to toggle the units between Imperial and Metric, which is useful if your board is in Metric but you want to calculate the values to store into the ADVPCB.DFT file.

e14softwareuk · Answer

The tenting property does seem to persist. If the tick boxes for "Force complete tenting on top/bottom" are checked these parameters copy and paste. Also when placing a via hit TAB to check the property of these check boxes and then any subsequent vias should maintain the same selection. The net assignment is lost during copy/paste but the TAB property change does work - set the net for the first via and then subsequent ones placed will keep the same net. If you have vias without nets then you don't need to change the net on each one individually - use the object inspector to change all selected vias.