Polygons - automatic repour on error

This is a previous response that may deal with this issue.  Let us know if this clarifies things:

Currently CircuitStudio doesn't expose the pour order even though it is stored in the PCB file.

The larger outer polygons need to be created last because newer polygons are poured last in the pouring order.

To fix the board you will need to re-create the large outer polygon so that it pours after the others.

Open the PCB panel and choose Polygons from the drop down list.

Click <All Polygons> and then double click on the large polygon in the list of polygons names, e.g. TOP_GND

Write down the settings (or take screen capture), e.g.

Remove islands: 2 sq mm

Arc approx: 0.013mm

Necks: 0.127mm

Name: TOP_1V2_C_1

TopLayer

Net: 1V2_C

Pour over all same net objects

remove dead copper

Click the Outline Vertices tab at the top and click the Menu button > Export to CSV, name it, e.g. TOP_1V2_C_1

Cancel out of the dialog and click on the document tab to take the focus back to the PCB document

Press Delete to delete the polygon

Press the Home > Polygon button, change the Name e.g. TOP_1V2_C_1 and draw a small simple polygon anywhere on the board

Double click e.g. TOP_1V2_C_1 in the panel and ensure the correct Net is specified in teh Connect to Net setting.

Click the Outline Vertices tab

Menu > Import From CSV and double click on the CSV file e.g. TOP_1V2_C_1.csv

Click back to the Graphical tab

Ensure Is Poured is ticked and click OK

Click Repour Now

The Home > Polygon Pour > Repour All button should now repour the inner polygons before the new one you just created.

Sorry but I think you've missed my point.

I've no problems repouring polygons, I just use the standard repour now and that resolves the issue.

To give an example, say I've created a board design, placed some tracks and then a polygon pour for a ground plane. All good.

I then decide to move a track slightly for some reason but this track now runs through part of the ground plane. CS will pop up a warning about the polygon needing repoured and asking me if I want to repour it now?

I can do this and all is fine. However, in Altium Designer there's an option to enable this to happen automatically i.e. repour the polygon without a popup asking me if I want to do this.

If is simply not available in CS as part of the deliberate crippling of the product to justify price points then that's fair enough but hte dialogue I mentioned above has a specific mention that this popup can be disabled in PCB Preferences so I assume that's either an error or the omission on the PCB preferences is an error.

OK...I will pass this on to the developers for a reply.

Much appreciated, thanks.

Hello Altium / element14 team,

will this be fixed in the next release?

- Either remove the link / text in the erronous pop-up OR

- Just add the missing "Always repour polygons on modification" in PCB preferences to solve it

Please let me know if you refuse doing it.

In this case I would like to refund my recently bought circuit studio license. It drives me crazy and the workaround published here is just a joke in my opinion (Is there an option to disable polygon repour popup?)

This annoying window has been driving me crazy for years already. Please, add an option to disable it in future releases.

Polygon re-pours are so slow on all but the most trivial of boards, trying to work with auto re-pours would drive me insane(r).

Pouring polys is the very last thing I do on a board.

Hi @voltsandjolts,

If CS performance is bothering you, then you could run the DXP.exe (CS executable) with high priority. From I what I saw, CS is run mainly on a single thread/processor and running the executable as high priority will help.

From another forum I learned that you could automate this by using a small open-source utility named 'Bat to Exe Converter' which can be downloaded from here: Bat To Exe Converter | F2KO Software

From the same forum (it's another user work, I only copy/paste here) the BAT file should look like this:

@echo off
IF [%1] == [] (
Start "Altium Circuit Studio" /high "C:\Program Files (x86)\Altium\CS\DXP.orig.EXE"
REM echo "There is no input file"
) ELSE (
Start "Altium Circuit Studio" /high "C:\Program Files (x86)\Altium\CS\DXP.orig.EXE" %1
REM echo "Input file is %1"
)
REM pause

assuming that your CS installation folder is the default one.

Using this BAT as a source you will create a new DXP.exe file which is more or less an "shortcut" to the real DXP.exe file which now needs to be renamed to DXP.orig.exe

You also need to rename the following files from:

dxp.exe.config

DXP.exe.manifest

to:

dxp.orig.exe.config

DXP.orig.exe.manifest

You can still run the CS as you used to but this time you do it from the renamed file: DXP.orig.exe

If you want to run CS as a high priority process you do it from the new "shortcut" DXP.exe

If you trust running an executable from an outside source I post here a link with the small executable that I just created through the same process just described (and also tested it). I also found and used  in this executable the CS icon.

If you use the file in the following link, unzip it and remember also to rename the original files as mentioned above.

https://cp.sync.com/dl/79aeb2b00/chvma4pg-3bqfmduj-tqdf98p9-h8v38qri

Interesting idea - have you seen any difference in performance by using a higher process priority. I would have thought that it would not make much difference unless you are seriously multitasking on your computer. It would be great to get a comparison if it boost performance.

Thanks for the info on process priority, however, for pouring polys it made no difference for me.

I'm running a HP Z-book i7-7820HQ 16GB.

The board I'm working on (approx 100x150mm) takes 8 seconds to pour two large polys, 4 secs to repour.

Making the dxp process high priority didn't speed this up unfortunately.

Who knows, maybe the CS code is pour_poly() then sleep(4000). That would not surprise me.