Electronic – Need help in Altium polygon copper pour selects and deselects using arcs, angles, full circles

altiumcadcopper-pourdxfpcb-design

This is a follow up question of my previous question. I've done this board using AutoCAD and exported to DXF.

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After that I used Altium designer to import the DXF file in which the outline turned out as shown in this pic.

enter image description here

Now I need to modify the outline to get the actual PCB board like this:

enter image description here

I have tried adding the polygon pour using full circle, arcs,lines but its pouring the copper all over including the gap tracks. So I'm confused and struggling to find a proper way to do this. Please help me guys.

Best Answer

What you will probably have to do is to multi-select the line and arc objects for each copper shape (shift+click) then go to

Tools > Convert > Create Polygon from Selected Primitives

[Keyboard shortcut "T V G"]

You can set the settings to make it pour solid, and assign it a net there. You can only do this for one polygon at a time, but you can edit the properties in bulk by multi-selecting the polygon objects (shift-click) and using the PCB Inspector.

To make the board shape like you want, select the bounding lines and go to

Design > Board Shape > Define from selected objects

You can make the holes as board cutouts in a similar way that you did the polygons, but it will probably just be easier to make correctly sized holes with place pad, "P P" on the keyboard.


I'm sorry that the creating polygons task will probably be a giant pain, but if you get sophisticated enough, you can probably find a script someone has made and modify it to do the job.


To make polygons into a circular area with a cutout:

  1. Select the INSIDE ring
  2. Tools > Convert > Create Cutout from Selected Primitives "T V T" (Note: NOT Board Cutout)
  3. Make sure the cutout object is on the copper layer (or whatever) you need to draw the polygon on.
  4. Select the OUTSIDE ring
  5. Tools > Convert > Create Polygon from Selected Primitives "T V G"
  6. Make sure you select solid fill, and assign it a net if you need to.
  7. The polygon should pour with an open center. This will NOT work if you do it with a board region.

I prefer polygons because they are smart objects that respect the DRC rules (especially clearance), based on the pour order. You can also specify how they interact with traces that belong to the same net. This can be very handy for various uses.