Howdy,
I’m using Altium DXP to design a power supply board. It’s way, way too complex for what I’m doing, but it’s what we have.
Does anyone know what I need to enable to get it to print the board outline as solid black on a color printout? I can’t find the right search terms to Google the answer and my head is sore from beating it against the wall for the past hour.
I’d like to be able to print exactly what’s on the screen, but the black board shape just won’t print.
Thanks in advance!
Did you try exporting (or what ever its called in DXP) to a Gerber file then open the Gerber in a Gerber viewer to print?
I do this when designing a PCB in PCAD. PCB layout programs tend to show the copper more symbolically but a Gerber viewer shows what you really have.
I use the free ViewMate found here:
Hey Walt,
It has Camtastic built in and I have ViewMate installed. It’s too much trouble to do all of that just to print out a quick reference for a design review. I’m sure it’s some weirdly worded option that I can’t find and I imagine our tech support options have long since run out…without a check for several thousand dollars’ worth of an upgrade.
Another thought:
Try changing the color of the board outline in DXP. It could be that the ‘black’ translates to white when printing. I know that sounds weird but I’ve seen it happen with other programs.
Funny, I just tried that about an hour ago. No good. Same thing with getting a composite with the solder mask on top. Thanks for the suggestion!
Heck, at this point it would be easier to just print out a 100% screen capture!
You could always draw a polygon pour and change the layer color to black…