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Menus

The menus are located at the top of the Layout area. Most, but not all, of their functions are also available from the keyboard. Similarly, some functions are only achievable through the keyboard or command entry. Some menu entries such as center layout in the Screen menu require a certain cross hair position. In this case a prompt message will popup at the bottom of the screen with wording similar to the following:

     move pointer to the appropriate screen position and press a button
     
Any mouse button will do the job, whereas any key except the arrow (cursor) keys will cancel the operation. If it seems like the menu hasn't done what you expected, check to see if it is waiting for the position click. For details see Actions.

Pressing Btn3 in the Layout area also pops up a menu with many of the most common operations (except when you're in the midst of drawing a line or arc). When a choice in the Btn3 popup menu needs a cross hair position, it uses the position where the cross hair was when Btn3 was pressed. For example, to get detailed information on an object, place the cross hair over the object, press Btn3, then choose object report. If you pop up the Btn3 menu but don't want to take any of the actions, click on one of the headers in the menu.


File
This menu offers a choice of loading, saving and printing data, saving connection information to a file or quitting the application. Most of the entries in the File menu are self explanatory. Selecting print layout pops up a printer control dialog. A selection of several device drivers is available from the printer control dialog. Presently PostScript, encapsulated PostScript, and GerberX are supported. The GerberX driver produces all of the files necessary to have the board professionally manufactured. The connection saving features in the File menu produce outputs in an arcane format that is not too useful. They do not produce netlist files.
Edit
The Edit menu provides the usual cut, copy, paste which work on selections. To learn how to create complex selections, see Arrow Tool. The Edit menu also provides access to Undo and Redo of the last operation. These can also be accomplished with the U key and Shift-R key. Finally, the Edit menu allows you to change the names of: the layout, the active layer, or text objects on the layout.
Screen
The Screen menu supports most functions related to the whole Layout area. There are various entries to change the grid to some popular values, the zoom factor, and which kind of element name is displayed. You can also re-align the grid origin and turn on and off the display of the grid. Before changing the grid alignment, I recommend that you zoom in as close as possible so that you're sure the grid points appear exactly where you want them.

The Screen menu also allows you to turn on and off the visibility of the solder-mask layer. When the solder-mask layer is made visible it obscures most of the layout, so only turn this on when you really want to know what the solder-mask will look like. The solder-mask that you see belongs to the side of the board you are viewing, which can be changed with the view solder side option, also found in the Screen menu. When the solder-mask is displayed, the pin and pad clearance adjustments (see Line Objects) alter the size of mask cut-outs.

Sizes
The Sizes menu allows you to select a group of line thickness, via diameter, via drill size, and clearance (keepaway) (collectively called a "routing style") to be copied to the "active" sizes. You can also change the names given to the routing styles and adjust their values from this menu. The "active" sizes are also adjustable from this menu. The "active" sizes are shown in the status-line and control the initial size of new vias, drilling holes, lines, clearances, text-objects and also the maximum dimensions of the board layout.
Settings
The Settings menu controls several operating configuration parameters. The edit layer groups entry brings up a dialog that allows you to change the way layers are grouped. Layer grouping is described in Layer Objects. The all-direction lines entry controls the clipping of lines to 45-degree angles. You can also control whether moving individual objects causes the attached lines to "rubber band" with the move or not from the Settings menu. Another entry controls whether the starting clip angle for the two-line mode (see Line Objects) alternates every other line. You can also control whether element names must be unique from the Settings menu. When unique element names are enforced, copying a new element will automatically create a unique layout-name name for it provided that the name originally ended with a digit (e.g. U7 or R6). The Settings menu allows you to control whether the cross hair will snap to pins and pads even when they are off-grid. Finally you can control whether new lines and arcs touch or clear intersecting polygons from this menu.
Select
This menu covers most of the operations that work with selected objects. You may either (un)select all visible objects on a layout or only the ones which have been found by the last connection scan see . You can delete all selected objects from this menu. Other entries in the Select menu change the sizes of selected objects. Note that a select action only affects those objects that are selected and have their visibility turned on in the Layer Control panel. The Select menu also provides a means for selecting objects by name using unix Regular Expressions.
Buffer
From the Buffer menu you may select one out of five buffers to use, rotate or clear its contents or save the buffer contents to a file. You can also use the break buffer element to pieces entry to de-compose an element into pieces for editing. Note: only objects with visibility turned on are pasted to the layout. If you have something in a buffer, then change which side of the board you are viewing, the contents of the buffer will automatically be mirrored for pasting on the side you are viewing. It is not necessary to clear a buffer before cutting or copying something into it - it will automatically be cleared first.
Connects
The entries available through the Connects menu allow you to find connections from objects and to manipulate these. You can also optimize or erase rat's nests from this menu. Finally, the auto-route all rats entry allows you to auto-route all connections show by the rat's nest. The auto-router will use any visible copper layer for routing, so turn off the visibility of any layers you don't want it to use. The auto-router will automatically understand and avoid any traces that are already on the board, but it is not restricted to the grid. Finally, the auto-router routes using the active sizes (except for nets that have a route-style defined). Pcb always knows which tracks were routed by the auto-router, and you can selectively remove them without fear of changing tracks that you have manually routed with the rip-up all auto-routed tracks entry in the Connects menu. The design rule checker entry runs a check for copper areas that are too close together, or connections that touch too tenuously for reliable production. The DRC stops when the first problem is encountered so after fixing a problem be sure to run it again until no problems are found.
          Warning: COPPER TEXT IS IGNORED BY THE DRC CHECKER.
          

Info
The generate object report entry from the Info menu provides a way to get detailed information about an object, such as its coordinates, dimensions, etc. You can also get a report summarizing all of the drills used on the board with generate drill summary. Lastly, you can get a list of all pins, pads and vias that were found during a connection search.
Window
The Window menu provides a way to bring each of Pcb's windows to the front. The Library window is used to bring elements from the library into the paste-buffer. The Message Log window holds the various messages that Pcb sends to the user. The Netlist window shows the list of connections desired.

Now that you're familiar with the various menus, it's time to try some things out. From the File menu choose load layout, navigate to the tutorial folder, then load the file tut1.pcb.