Measure Dialog

Changing the active mouse mode to Measure will bring up the Measure Dialog. It can measure distances between several types of objects.

The radio buttons at the top of the dialog allow the measurement selection type to be changed.

• Point selects individual points.
• Component or pin centre selects component or pin centres.
• Net or pin pad selects nets or pin pads.

The centre point of a component or pin is the centre of the bounding rectangle. Nets and pads do not have centres, so the measurement is always from the nearest point anywhere on the net.

The object types that can be compared are:

• Points which are single points selected by clicking the mouse on the screen.
• Components can only be selected if a component layer is enabled. The component centre will be selected.
• Pins can only be selected if the component layer is enabled. Pins are defined on the component layers but also have pads on the signal layers and associated layers. The pin centre will be selected.
• Nets defined as a set of features marked in the ODB++ data as sharing the same net.

If zero or one objects have been selected, candidate objects appear on the dialog as the mouse hovers over them. When the mouse is clicked the object is kept.

When both objects have been selected, they remain frozen on the dialog until a new object is selected on the screen. Alternatively, it is possible to click on one of the two object names on the dialog. This keeps the clicked object and discards the other.

When a measurement is made, the pan and zoom will automatically be adjusted to show the point at which the measurement was taken, marked by a white line.

Many objects have different geometries per layer. In this case the distance is calculated for each layer. Points are independent of layer, including the centre points of components or pins. If either object has layers, the distances on different layers are displayed on different rows of the dialog.

When two objects are fixed in the measurement dialog, layers can be selected or deselected in the layer list and the dialog will be updated accordingly. The measurement line on a particular layer can be visualised by deselecting all other layers.