Customising DesignSpark PCB with your preferences.
Follow tutorial
Dave from DesignSpark
How do you feel about this tutorial? Help us to provide better content for you.
Dave from DesignSpark
Thank you! Your feedback has been received.
Dave from DesignSpark
There was a problem submitting your feedback, please try again later.
Dave from DesignSpark
What do you think of this tutorial?
This tutorial requires:
DesignSpark PCB V11.0.0This tutorial presents the main configuration options and illustrates the benefits available across the tiers. The following only introduces the interfaces, further details are available in Help, the Users Guide and Update Notes (all available under ‘Help’ on the menu bar), and further tutorials.
Preferences
In DesignSpark PCB, you can tailor the application operation to your requirements from Settings – Preferences.
There are many options, here we only show the opening tab for each product.
Preferences dialogue in Explorer.
Preferences dialogue in Creator.
Preferences dialogue in Engineer.
Both Creator and Engineer allow the use of dual screens for an enhanced experience.
The “Design Backups” provide enhanced security to keep your creations safe.
Engineer also has additional options available compared to Creator on certain tabs.
Colours
In the Colours dialogue you can change the colour of any design items.
There are separate Colours settings for the schematic and PCB editing windows. You can access the Colours dialogue for the active schematic or PCB editing window by the shortcut “C” or from “View” on the menu bar.
Here we show the PCB Colours dialogue.
Engineer has more options for this dialogue compared to Creator and Explorer. For example, you can now use autofill for symbols such as op-amps in your schematic design.
Engineer and Creator can also specify colours for Nets and Net Classes making the design process clearer.
Colours dialogue in Explorer.
Colours dialogue in Creator.
Colours dialogue in Engineer.
Customise
DesignSpark PCB is installed with keyboard shortcuts; the current assignments can be viewed from Help – Shortcut Keys… , however these can be customised to your requirements from the menubar Settings – Customise.
Explorer provides this dialogue to configure the Keyboard.
Additional options are available in Creator and Engineer.
Details about the additional tabs can be obtained from the Help file using <F1> for the active tab.
Below shows options to control “Screen Tips” and also “Large Icons” which is useful for high-resolution displays.
Customise for Creator.
Engineer also has a useful option to manage the long menu lists, this can display the recently used commands first and in shorter menus and allow the full list of commands to be displayed after a short delay. <F1> will provide further details.
Customise for Engineer.