Altium Designer 18: Region to Pad Routing Tutorial

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In this article, we will be covering the process of routing a region in Altium designer 18 (AD18) directly onto a pad. This is an essential skill for any PCB designer as it allows you to create complex and efficient board layouts.

Prerequisites:

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Before starting this tutorial, make sure that:

1. You have a valid license for AD18 installed on your system.

2. Your working environment has been set up with the correct PCB design rules and settings applied.

Step 1: Create a New Board

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1. Launch AltEditor from within AD18 by navigating to File > Projects > New Project...

2. In the subsequent dialog box, choose 'New Empty PCB' as your project type.

3. Click OK to create a new empty board.

Step 2: Add Pad and Region Components

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In this step, we will add two components - one pad component for our final soldering point (Pad1) and another region component which represents the area where the pads should be placed (Region1).

### Adding Pads

1. Double-click on your board to switch into Component mode.

2. In the Components panel, search for 'Through Hole Pad' under the 'Footprints/.pretty' section.

3. Right-click and drag-and-drop a new pad component onto your board.

Alternatively, you can also use the built-in command-line tool within AD18:

```bash

Pad New -type ThroughHole -name Pad1 -X 100mm -Y 50mm

```

### Adding Regions

To add a region component,

1. In Component mode, navigate to 'Footprints/Regions' and double-click on the desired region footprint.

2. Drag-and-drop this new region onto your board.

Alternatively, you can also use the command-line tool:

```bash

Region New -name Region1 -X 150mm -Y 75mm -Width 10mm -Length 12mm

```

Step 3: Route Pad to Region

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Now that we have our pad and region components placed correctly on the board, let's route them together using AD18.

### Selecting Components

1. Switch back into Board mode by double-clicking anywhere outside of your schematic or component hierarchy.

2. Click-and-dright-click on each component (Pad1 and Region1) to select both objects at once.

Alternatively, you can also use the shortcut keys: Ctrl + Spacebar > 'Select All' for Windows or Command + Spacebar followed by 'Enter' key for Macintosh systems.

### Routing Components

Once your components are selected,

1. Right-click on one of them and choose 'Route Between Selected Objects'.

AD18 will then automatically generate a trace between the two component pads based upon its default routing rules, such as length, width, via type etc., depending upon which specific rule set has been applied.

Step 4: Optimizing Route

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After generating your initial route,

1. Double-click on any segment of the generated route to open up AD18's Route mode.

2. Here you can further optimize and fine-tune various aspects such as:

- Width/Thickness settings for each net (Alt + W / Option + Shift + W)

- Via types (Right-Click > Change via type...)

3. Once satisfied with your optimized route, save all changes by clicking on File > Save All.

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In conclusion, we have successfully created a basic PCB layout using Altium Designer 18 by routing between two pads in AD18. This article covered the essential steps required to achieve this goal and provided additional information about optimizing routes for improved board performance.

Altium designer 18 region to pad