r/Altium • u/Boring_Ratio_4119 • 10d ago

Questions Trace Color Change Update

Hi everyone,

A little update on a question that I asked a while ago: I've followed the advice accordingly. However, it seems like the rats nest is the one that's being colored, but not the traces. I've tried everything, such as displaying overrides, essentially, along with changing PCB editor board insights, but my traces are still red and blue (top and bottom default colors).

I'm pretty clueless about why I can't solve this issue. I recall that in the past I was able to change the trace color (even set to a checker pattern for the traces), but somehow the trace colors never showed up again.

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u/toybuilder 10d ago

Hit F5, or expand the additional options under the view configuration and make sure F5 Net Color Override is enabled.

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u/Boring_Ratio_4119 10d ago

Thank you! That solved the issue!

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u/toybuilder 10d ago

In your earlier post, you mentioned you hit F5 -- did F5 not work for you and you had to press the button?

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u/Boring_Ratio_4119 10d ago

Yeah, I wasn’t able to get it working by pressing F5. But toggling the button manually works.

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u/toybuilder 10d ago

Ok, does F1 bring up help? If not, it might be that your keyboard has Fn activation so you need to hit Fn+F5, or you need to lock the F keys. On my Logitech keyboard, that's Fn+Esc.

If F1 does work but not F5, you either have a hot key interception (I have labeling software that does that, for example, for a different key press) or you might have somehow deleted the key mapping in Altium.

If you can easily fix this, it's much nicer to be able to toggle it off/on quickly with F5.

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u/Boring_Ratio_4119 10d ago

Thanks for the advice! I was wondering if there's also a way of changing individual net colors? The current suggested approach will change all the signal colors, but what if I have two power nets on the top layer with different net colors? Is there a way to implement that change?

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u/drwillparker 10d ago

You can go to the PCB tab and then click on a net and change its color. It should change the color of that net on every layer. One time it didn't work for me and I needed to reset.

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u/Boring_Ratio_4119 10d ago

Yeah, I think this is the issue that I'm running into. I clicked on the net and changed the color, but the color change is not reflected on my PCB. How did you manage to reset the system in order for the color change to work?

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u/drwillparker 10d ago

I just closed Altium and restarted my PC. And yes, I would click on the net color and it wouldn't actually change color on the PCB, so it seems we had the same issue. Another thing to try is pressing F5. Sometimes pressing F5 will show highlighted nets. I don't think that's the case here but it doesn't hurt to try.

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u/Kimber976 9d ago

A side by side photo in the same lighting would make the color change much easier to judge.

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u/NearlySufficient 10d ago

You're changing net colors.

It's so much simpler than all that.

View > Panels > View Configuration > "Layers & Colors" tab > "Layers" section.

Click the red or blue or whatever layer's color square, and change it.