Placement Tools

Placement Tools

Every "add something to the schematic" flow lives here: wires, buses, labels, components, text, and the drawing tools (line, rectangle, circle, arc, polygon).

Shortcuts below are the Altium profile defaults unless noted. The Classic profile uses single keys (W wire, B bus, L label, T text) — see Keyboard Shortcuts. Most tools on this page are also reachable from the Active Bar, which is the only route for the ones with no default binding. The Component tool is the exception — it has no Active Bar button; use P P or the canvas right-click menu (Part).

All placement tools share two common behaviours:

1. Tab during placement opens a properties dialog for the object before you drop it — pre-configure the width, fill, etc. without placing + re-editing.
2. Esc cancels. One press drops every armed mode at once — the current tool, any in-flight lasso, the net-colour pen, the z-order picker, and any pre-placement defaults — and returns you to Select. Right-click is not the same: it aborts an in-progress drag, and cancels an in-flight wire run (returning to Select), but otherwise opens the context menu. Only Esc drops every armed mode.

There is no armed-tool cursor change. Signex uses one OS cursor shape across every canvas mode (arrow when idle, native pan/move cursors while dragging). Feedback for an armed mode is drawn on the canvas instead — a placement crosshair at the cursor (the same shape for every placement mode), a floating tag naming the active tool ("Wire", "Bus", "Label", "Component", …), the tool's ghost preview, the net-colour pencil, and the lasso polygon preview.

Wire — P W or Ctrl+W

The most-used tool. Arm it, click where the wire starts, click each corner point, double-click to finish.

• Wires snap to grid. The default grid is 1.27 mm (50 mil); the grid picker offers 0.635 mm (25 mil), 1.27 mm, 2.54 mm (100 mil) and 5.08 mm (200 mil).
• Junctions are placed for you. When a wire ends on another wire, Signex inserts the junction automatically (within a 0.01 mm tolerance). There is no junction tool to arm — the Classic profile's J binding is declared but not wired.

Ctrl+W places a wire — it does not close the tab.

Bus — Active Bar → Wiring → Bus

(Classic profile: B. The Altium profile has no bus binding.)

Same interaction as Wire, but draws a thick bus line.

A bus is a bundle graphic, not a net. The netlist never merges buses, and a pin sitting on a bare bus endpoint forms no net. Bus range/vector label syntax (CLK[0..7] and similar) is not implemented — a bus carries no members today.

Label — P N

Places a net label — a name that identifies a net. Arm the tool, then click to drop the label.

Four label types exist in the format — Net (local), Global, Hierarchical, and Power. There is no label-type picker: the type is decided by which tool you arm. P N / Active Bar → Wiring → Net Label places a local Net label; Active Bar → Port places a Global one; Active Bar → Off-Sheet Connector places a Hierarchical one. Power nets are placed as power-port symbols (Active Bar → Power), not with the label tool.

Same-name labels merge into a single net, and hierarchical labels stitch across sheets via the shared netlist derivation. See Hierarchical Sheets.

Component — P P

P P arms the Component tool. It does not open the Components panel — open that from the panel list yourself.

1. Pick a component in the Components panel — this sets the component the tool will place.
2. Click on the canvas to drop it. Signex auto-assigns the next reference designator for the symbol's prefix.
3. Tab before dropping opens the pre-placement editor (designator, value, rotation).
4. Esc to stop placing.

The tool places whatever component is currently selected in the panel. With nothing selected, clicking the canvas places nothing.

Components come from Signex's own .snxsym symbol containers and .snxlib libraries. The Library panel and the Library Browser tab (.snxlib opened as a tab) let you browse libraries and drill into their components.

Text — Active Bar → Text → Text String

(Classic profile: T. In the Altium profile T is a chord prefix — T A annotates.)

Places a freeform text annotation (not connected to any net). Useful for labelling sections ("Power Supply", "Analog Front-End") or adding notes.

Text supports Signex's own inline markup:

Markup	Renders as
**text**	bold
*text*	italic
~~text~~	strikethrough
_~text~_	overbar (e.g. _~RESET~_)
^text^	superscript
~text~	subscript
[label](url)	link

Escape any sigil with a backslash (\* → a literal *). Markup does not nest — **_~OE~_** gives a bold segment containing the literal text.

The canvas font is Iosevka, bundled with Signex, and Unicode works.

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Drawing tools

Open the Drawing Tools button on the Active Bar (its dropdown is the Shapes menu) to reach the drawing primitives. These draw graphical decoration — they don't participate in the netlist or ERC.

The dropdown offers Arc, Full Circle, Elliptical Arc, Ellipse, Line, Rectangle, Round Rectangle, Polygon and Bezier. Several map onto a shared underlying tool:

Dropdown item	Tool used
Line	Line
Rectangle, Round Rectangle	Rectangle
Full Circle, Ellipse, Elliptical Arc	Circle
Arc	Arc (3-click)
Polygon	Polyline
Bezier	Line

Round Rectangle, Ellipse, Elliptical Arc and Bezier are dropdown entries that fall back to the plain Rectangle / Circle / Line tools — they do not yet draw a distinct shape.

Line

Two-click: click start, click end. The tool stays armed for the next line. For a multi-segment run, use Polygon instead.

Rectangle

Click one corner, click the opposite corner.

Circle

Click the centre, click any point on the edge to set the radius.

Arc — 3-click

Three-click arc: first click = start, second = mid, third = end.

Polygon — click-by-click

Click each vertex in turn; double-click or Enter to close the polygon.

Stroke colour

Each drawing carries its own stroke colour, stored in the native .snxsch file alongside the geometry. Edit it in the Properties panel. Unset falls back to the theme's default drawing colour.

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Hierarchical Sheet Block

(Classic profile: S — declared but not wired.)

Active Bar → Sheet → Sheet Symbol currently falls back to the plain two-click Rectangle tool: it draws a rectangle graphic, it does not create a child-sheet reference. Placing one from the canvas is not wired up yet.

Where a schematic already references a child sheet, double-click the sheet block (in Select mode) to enter it — the child opens as a tab.

See Hierarchical Sheets for the multi-sheet workflow end-to-end.

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Common placement controls

Control	Effect
Esc	Cancel — drops the tool and every armed mode, returns to Select
Right-click	Aborts a drag or an in-flight wire run; otherwise opens the context menu
Tab	Pause placement and open pre-placement properties
Enter	Commit whichever multi-click buffer is armed — an in-flight lasso or polygon
Scroll wheel	Zoom while placing (doesn't cancel the tool)
Middle-drag or right-drag	Pan while placing

Space / X / Y rotate and mirror only a single selected symbol — they are not general during-placement transforms. See Schematic Editing.