Circuit studio via problems

Question

I've had circuit studio for a while now, but only started making serious use of it recently. I like many of the features, but it seems to be riddled with bugs. It seems to me that they slapped some parts of altium together, and disabled others, but never really smoothed everything out.

My problem is (which may have been already solved - if so, please help me out). The default via size is 28/50. You can manually edit every via you place to another size, but this is a serious pain (or you can edit the size and as long as you don't exit the tool it stays.) But exit and 28/50 again!. You are supposed to be able to change to another preferred size and have it continue in that size. It seems to ignore the defaults table. I even deleted that size. I went through the various menus and options. Shift+V brings up the sizes, but choosing a new one does nothing, then access violation errors start, and "collecting information" appears.

To be honest I don't have the very latest version as I really don't want to spend more money to update my subscription until I know they are going to support the product.

Anyone else have any answers? (Ver 1.2.0)

adamwebber · Answer

I may be able to help. I see the same problem when placing vias. If you place multiple vias one time then you can select the via size by pressing the 'Tab' key to bring up the via properties. All subsequent vias will be whatever size you select. But if you go do something else and come back and try to place some more vias, it goes back to its default size. Yes, this is frustrating. But there is a workaround. Go into your user folder and find CircuitStudio. Should look something like this: C:\Users\Craig\AppData\Roaming\Altium\CircuitStudio {12345567098098SOMENUMBERSANDLETTERS} In this folder, there is a file called ADVPCB.DFT. You can search for this file directly in Windows. I recommend once you find it, you create a shortcut to the folder so that when (not if) you need to change some default settings, you can go right to it. MAKE A COPY OF THE ORIGINAL FILE!!! Don't lose this. It is important. If you screw up something then you will always have the original to go back to. Open ADVPCB.DFT with a word editing program. I use notepad++. It's free. Find the RECORD=Via line. Should be line 3. In there it shows the via default dimensions as Diameter and Hole Size. Change them to your most common default size. You can change other aspects but I recommend changing only the diameter and hole size for now. Save this file. Open CircuitStudio and place your via. It will now always bring it up as your default size. A nice feature of CS would be to integrate a batch file of sorts. Someone should write one. Make it an executable. In this executable you should be able to change all of your defaults and save the file. Even better would be if CS integrated this directly into their software. I think that will be my next PCB project. Making an executable to rewrite all the default values without having to edit a document.