Tutorials:
Quality Check

1. You can perform various quality checks on your design. These can be run by going to Tools > Quality Check > Perform Quality Check... . This will bring up the 'Quality Check' dialog box, where you can choose which types of checks you want to perform.

2. Choosing the Design Rule Check looks for items on the board that are too close together, or those that short-circuit by touching or crossing over each other. Go to Settings > Spacings... to define the rules for how close together items are allowed to be. All combinations of tracks, pads, vias, shapes, text and board outline can be specified. Each error is described by type, location and layer, followed by a summary of the errors found.

3. Choosing Component Values checks each of your components against the list of allowed Values and tells you about any of them that don't match the rules.

4. Choosing Dangling Tracks checks for all tracks that start and/or end on a junction on which no other tracks are present. This generally indicates incomplete routing, perhaps where a track has been routed out of a pad and 'dropped' to be finished later. Where possible, the component name and pad number are shown, as well as the coordinates of the dangling end.

5. Choosing Circuit Integrity checks your PCB design for breaks in electrical continuity.

6. Choosing Unconnected Pads produces a detailed list by component of each pin found without a connection. In each case the pin number and name (where relevant) is given. Note: Some footprints and/or designs contain unused pads for a valid reason, and so this quality check option may often give errors that are not actually a problem in the design.

7. Choosing Items on Board checks that all the components and tracks are within the board outline.

8. Once you have finished making your selections in the 'Quality Check' dialog box click 'OK' to generate your Quality Check report, which will be produced in Microsoft Notepad.

9. Error markers are also added to the design for some of the errors found by the checking. These are usually shown as a pair of letters, where each letter tells you the kind of item that is wrong:

T - Track
P - Pad
V - Via
C - Copper
X - Text
B - Board
D - Drill hole error
DT - Dangling Track
CI - Circuit Integrity

To locate an error in the design use the 'Find Next Error' (shortcut key <E> ) and 'Find Previous Error' commands in the Tools > Quality Check menu.

To clear the error markers you can choose Hide Quality Check Errors from the Tools > Quality Check menu. This won't fix the problems that the Quality Check found, it will just take the error markers away. If you don't fix the cause of the error, next time you run Quality Check the errors will re-appear.

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