Silkscreen Cutout

Question

I am building Capacitive Touch buttons for my project and am overlaying each button with silkscreen. At the center of each silkscreen area I want to cut out an icon to represent the buttons function (ie. a negative image). I am having trouble figuring out an efficient way to do this. I tried using a Polygon Pour Cutout on the Top Overlay layer, but it doesn't seem to work.

The best way I have figured out at this point is to draw a 360° arc, with a thickness of about 1/3 of the radius of the circle that it is filling (such that the outer radius of the arc is the same radius as the button) which leaves a 2/3 unfilled circle within. Then using filled rectangles, add to the silkscreen layer until the shape I want is formed. This is a huge PITA when all I really want are basic geometric shapes that would normally be easy to accomplish as a "positive" image (ie. make the shape out of Silkscreen instead of taking away silkscreen). Am I missing something?

r.gibson · Accepted Answer

Okay, so to answer my original question, in Altium Circuit Studio v1.4:

1) Start from within the PCB editor window (Not Footprint editor)

2) From the ribbon bar, select Home -> Place -> Full Circle

3) Place and size the circle

4) Double click the circle and select Properties -> Layer -> "Top Overlay"

5) From the Search bar in the upper right corner of the window

6) Type "convert" and select "Convert > Create Polygon from Selected Primitives"

7) From the ribbon bar, select the drop-down under Home -> Pour -> "Polygon Pour" and select "Polygon Pour Cutout"

8) Draw your cutout shape within the circle (Optionally cycling through corner styles using Shift-Space hotkeys)

9) Double click within the cutout shape and select the Polygon Pour Cutout from the popup

10) From the Region window, select Properties -> Layer -> "Top Overlay" and then select OK

11) Double click inside the circle (but outside the cutout shape) to bring up the Polygon Pour configuration window

12) At the top of the window, change "Fill Mode" to "Solid (Copper Regions)"

13) Down below in the same window, select Properties -> Layer -> "Top Overlay" and then select OK

14) From the pop-up, select "Repour Now"

15) Select the entire circle (including the arc, the polygon fill and the polygon cutout. If you aren't careful it will only take the Polygon pour.) and either copy or cut it to the clipboard

16) Switch to the PcbLib Footprint Editor and either create new footprint, or paste it into an existing one

17) If you need to rotate it, you will need to do it from the original in the PCB Editor, not within the Footprint Editor, as it will not repour the polygon. Also, it is not sufficient to select and then rotate it using the spacebar, you must select and then begin moving it with the mouse, THEN press the spacebar to rotate.

Thanks Marius for helping me figure this out. Definitely wasn't very intuitive, but glad we came up with a solution for now. Hopefully they fix this in an upcoming release!

mars01 · Answer

Hi, Regarding your point 3. " 3) Select Tools -> Convert -> "Create Polygon From Selected Primitives" It has been discusses before. The command is not in the GUI but you can access it by typing "convert" keyword in the top right Search field. In the list of results that pop-up you'll find the command: "Convert -> Create Polygon From Selected Primitives" BTW: by Trial and Error you'll find other useful commands. Result:

mars01 · Answer

You have them both, although you've asked for Create Polygon ... For Pour and Unpour, select and then right click on a Polygon, under the Polygon Actions selection there is a list with many possible actions, among them are those you mentioned. LE: If you want to access them through search field, type: "polygon". LLE: if I understood correctly, what you need is something like this:

mars01 · Answer

Yes, the search function is context sensitive. Welcome to the world of CircuitStudio: everything is but not quite.You have to dig through it, the search function is the same as it is on Altium Designer 18 so I think that CS served at some point as a testbed for different features. This search function is quite powerful, you can search for components, nets, built-in commands that are not exposed in GUI (yet, I hope). I advice you to have a look in the Altium Designer menu structure and try to search for the names of those functions. Some they might be in CS. You can build your custom silkscreen on a PCB file and then copy/paste everything in the PcbLib file. Like in picture below. As for why the polygons are not automatically repoured (although there is a reference there) it might be because CircuitStudio is not a completely finished product and we are all waiting anxiously for the next update that should solve all those problems. I understand from another forum, that one Altium support guy promised that now everything is on track and the delay in CS updates is due of the release of Altium Designer 18 which, understandable, took the focus of the programmer team. Which I sort of suspected all along.

Silkscreen Cutout

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