Altium's user interface, and particularly that of Camtastic, the internal
gerber viewer/manipulator, is notoriously horrendous. So we all feel your
pain!
Note that there's a checkbox in the photoplot generator module for whether to
omit unconnected pads or not. Altium doesn't recognize any kind of via or pad
library, so there's no way to set or re-set this feature for just power nets.
And Altium "just plane" refuses to put out pads on plane layers. (For that
reason and other annoyances, I don't use plane layers.
I export gerbers, then load them into Pentalogix ViewMate. The Viewer program
is distributed free, and is probably the most popular gerber viewer in the
world. For $100, you get a high performance gerber manipulator so you can
easily fix Altium's errors (and a $100 coupon for a board run). They of course
sell higher levels with more features also, but you probably won't need any of
them.
Using ViewMate Deluxe to get pads for selected drills is pretty easy, even on
Altium plane layers, but requires a few tricks. If you go this route, I can
help you out.
Wayne Thayer
-----Original Message-----
From: TechNet [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Technet Legg
Sent: Tuesday, December 09, 2014 9:16 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [TN] annular rings on internal layers and check plots
On a multilayer power assembly, I've usually expected annular rings on all
plated through hole layers. I've seen SEM images on more complex assemblies
where this wasn't the case. Is it unnecessary?
Getting Altium to output a gerber plot for checking, with this copper
included, seems to be an issue also. Is there a surefire way of generating
scaled WYSIWYG documents?
RL
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