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DSPCB Engineer - A walk through the many "Settings" Part 2

Note: this article is relevant to users of DesignSpark PCB with an Engineer subscription or looking for more information before upgrading.

As DSPCB Engineer has many advanced features it also has many more settings than DSPCB Explorer, here we provide a quick tour to help you identify some of the key ones that will be of interest.

The settings are available from the menubar <Settings> - <Preferences> and as you will see these are organised in groups under nine tabs.

Preferences - Cross Probe and Dual Screen tabs

The following is part 2 of the tour and covers the "Cross Probe", "Dual Screen" and "Warning" tabs.

Cross Probe.

This feature allows you to probe and locate items in a known design. It enables bi-directional Cross Probing between corresponding Schematic and PCB designs, between Schematic designs within a Project or betweenany open designs.

Cross Probe

This has a simple set of options and is covered in the User Guide and Help so only a brief summary is presented here.

Preferences - Cross Probe

Bring Probed Design Window to Front. This will ensure that the probed design is always visible by forcing it to the front as the active design. This is probably what you will require and is set as the default.

Auto Zoom after Probe. This enables you to see what has actually been selected in the probe target area. With this check box set (which is the default setting), the target design will zoom to show the selected item and a reasonable area around it.

Single-shot Operation. Activates the cross probe once. Unchecked the cross probe continues until exited.

Dual Screen.

This feature allows configuring your available PC displays to match your design requirements. It is again a simple interface that allows you to use any available displays listed in the System Information and assign to the Schematic and PCB designs.

Dual Screen - Preferences

Warnings.

Warnings Preferences

The list shows the warnings that have already been displayed by the application. If your response to the original warning message was "Don't tell me again" then the checkbox for this warning will be unchecked in the list. You can also uncheck (disable) or check (enable) any or all of the warnings in the list yourself.

The application will check this list of warnings to see whether or not that warning is enabled. If it is enabled, then the warning dialog will be displayed. If it is disabled, then the application will not display the dialog.

As an example when editing a component you may see this warning (second item in the above list).

Warning

Checking the highlighted check box will prevent the message from occurring again.It can be restored using the Preferences - Warnings as described above.

Future articles will discuss the key Engineer features available from the remaining tabs.

Part 1 discusses the "General" and "Display" tabs.

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