Selecting across layer in Ultiboard 10

[Kravlor]

I'm in the process of laying out a multi-channel board, where I need to get the layout of a single section fully complete before "stamping" out carbon copies of it elsewhere in the board. While working on particular sections, I find it helpful to work section-by-section through the various blocks of a channel.

Several of my SMT chips are just too tiny to get all the necessary connections all on the top layer of the board; as such, I have little "jumpers" through vias to another layer of the board.

What I'd like to do is to be able to select all of the components and nets associated with a section of my circuit and drag it around to best optimize my board area. However, I seem to only be able to select components and traces on one layer at a time -- when I move a selection [Original.png], the vias are happily dragged along, but the other layer's traces stay in their original positions [Moved.png].

I've made sure to set the 'Trace can be moved' radio button in the General tab of the Track Properties menu; similarly, I've checked the 'Re-route after move' checkbox in the PCB Design tab of the Global Preferences menu.

Am I just missing something obvious? Thanks in advance for your advice/suggestions.

[nestor-sg]

Try this:

With your mouse device... make a selection rectangle around all the objects you would like to move, but here is the catch... you have to click-hold your right-button..... not the left button... typically for a selection rectangle you would left-click the mouse... well, in this case right-click the mouse and draw the selection rectangle... once you finish and you let go the button you will see a small pop-up menu... select the first option, I think it says something like Select all in rectangle... all objects should get selected now. Please note that your selection filter should have all buttons pressed so all objects are selectable.

Additionally, once all objects are properly selected... then go to Edit > Group Selection... so you can create a single group out of all this objects and move them with just one click.

[Kravlor]

Thanks for the help -- that mostly did the trick!

It turns out the 'Select all in rectangle' feature fails to select traces if they are embedded in a powerplane. After I removed my ground plane, I was able to successfully right-drag to group across the layers. While I'll have to re-do my vias, it's a small price to pay for being able to properly, carefully wire up the components I need and optimize my board area usage.

FWIW, I feel this powerful feature should be called out in the Ultiboard Help much more clearly, say, in the 'Working with Traces' section.