PCB Design – Automatically Changing Traces in Altium from Impedance Layer Stackup

altiumimpedance-matchingpcb-design

Altium has the ability to track impedance in the layer stack manager. Is there a way to have it automatically update the trace sizes of controlled impedance traces such as diff pairs if the stackup or Dk changes?

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Best Answer

Changing the stack-up will affect the calculated trace width for impedance-controlled traces; however it will not automatically update existing traces.

To update trace width, select the traces of interest and use the "Route > Retrace Selected" command. This is assuming that you have a Design Rule in place which links the impedance profile to a net class. For more information see "Interactively Routing with Controlled Impedances on a PCB in Altium Designer: Routing Width Design Rule" in the official documentation.

To automatically select all traces that belong to a specific impedance profile, you can select Nets in the the PCB Panel and click the appropriate net class.

Net class selection in PCB panel