It reads your board, you don't re-enter anything
Point the extension at the PCB project you already have. It scans the document and pulls out everything a fixture needs: test points and their nets, which side each one sits on, mounting holes, board outline and thickness. Nothing is retyped, so nothing is mistyped.
- ▪Test points with designator, net and side (top / bottom)
- ▪Mounting holes
- ▪Board outline, dimensions and thickness
- ▪A summary you can check before generating anything
Pitch check: spacing problems, before production
Pogo pin receptacles have a physical footprint: two test points too close together means a fixture that simply cannot be drilled. The pitch check measures the centre-to-centre distance from every test point to its nearest neighbour and flags every pair that breaks your minimum clearance.
- ▪The usual clearances one click away (1.0 / 1.27 / 2.0 / 2.54 / 3.0 / 5.08 mm), or type your own
- ▪Sortable list: designator, net, side, distance to nearest neighbour
- ▪Interactive map with pan, zoom and click-to-select; violations circled in orange
- ▪Filter by top side, bottom side, or both
Manufacturer templates and a stack you control
A fixture is a stack of plates, and every manufacturer builds theirs differently. Pick a manufacturer and a series, then assign a board to each level: top probe board, top guide plate, your UUT, locating plate, bottom guide plate, bottom probe board. The gallery that ships with the extension is a starting point, not a closed list: whatever your shop actually builds, you add and keep.
- ▪Templates organised by manufacturer and series, with live previews
- ▪Per-level board assignment across the whole stack
- ▪Add manufacturers, add series, add your own in-house fixtures, and edit them later
- ▪Set the stack heights yourself when a job needs something non-standard
Pogo pins picked on the numbers that decide the choice
Assign a probe to each test point from the catalogue, filtered by head type and by the parameters an engineer actually selects on. The catalogue is yours to manage from the same window: import the probes your supplier sends you, edit their parameters, and keep them for every fixture that follows. A pin missing a mandatory parameter is flagged as incomplete instead of being silently assigned.
- ▪Head types: Spear, Crown, Serrated, Cup, Flat, Dome, Chisel, Star, Needle
- ▪Spring force, rated current, working and full travel, board-to-tip length, guide hole, pitch
- ▪Narrow the list to the pins that fit the fixture you selected, top side or bottom side
- ▪Import, edit and manage your own probes directly from the interface
- ▪Assign one probe to many test points at once
Schematics with every probe already net-labelled
Every probe board comes with its schematic generated: the probes placed, and each one carrying the net label of the test point it lands on, named after your board. The interface connector is placed alongside them with its pins labelled too. Routing the connections between the two stays yours to do, in an ordinary Altium schematic you open, edit and release through your normal process.
- ▪Every probe placed and labelled with the net of its test point
- ▪Net names taken straight from your board, so nothing is retyped
- ▪Interface connector placed and labelled for the chosen template
- ▪Standard Altium SchDoc documents, fully editable
A complete multi-board project, opened for you
The run produces a full Altium project group: each plate of the stack as its own PCB project with schematic and PCB documents, tied together by a multi-board assembly. It opens in Altium when generation finishes, ready to inspect and release.
- ▪One project per plate: probe boards, guide plates, locating plate
- ▪A multi-board (.PrjMbd / .MbaDoc) assembly tying the stack together
- ▪Written to a new numbered folder every run, so previous work is never overwritten
See the fixture before anyone machines it
Because the output is a real multi-board assembly, you get a true 3D view of the finished fixture: the plates at their computed heights, the probes landing on your test points, the board seated on the locating plate. Mistakes that used to surface at assembly show up on screen instead.
- ▪Probes checked against the real board in 3D
- ▪Plate spacing and stack height verified visually
- ▪Clearance problems caught before machining