Why not use "rooms" in Altium Designer Layout?

[miner_tom]

Hi Robert,

I have your courses and you describe how to avoid using "rooms" to combine components on a sheet for a specific purpose. However, I do not know WHY you do not like rooms. Can you explain?

Thank You
Tom

[Paul van Avesaath]

From my own experience rooms need to defined in all the rules, otherwise the DRC will trigger everything. this causes the workflow to slow down.
if i want to group items together i use the crosprobe fundtion. (in schematic -> select componets by dragging a rectangle around the components the go to the PCB (they should be highlighted, then use the T-O-C shortcutkeys to place them seperate from the rest.) fun fact if you select schematic components using the shift key, then in the pcb they will appear underneath you cursor in the same selection order when using T-O-C. this is realy handy if you wan to place in a specific order.

[WhoKnewKnows]

Yeah, IIUC, when you establish a room on the board, a room rule is added to rules under the placement section, AND a class with the same name as the room is added to component classes and that class will contain all of the components in the room that was created. This gives the user a way to create rules and control the design in a way that they wouldn't be able to otherwise. It's good for some things. Another tool in the tool box. My experience is that the room instantiation gets corrupted and an error happens that won't go away until the room is deleted and established again. Then when you do this, you have to go back to the rules and classes editor and clear out the old rules and classes that refer to the old rooms. I'd probably use rooms more if they weren't so glitchy.

[robertferanec]

I turn off automatic rooms for components because in 99% of my designs I do not need them. And if I leave them in the board, they become annoying (they just add unnecessary additional elements and rules into the PCB).

PS: If I need rooms e.g. to specify a special rule, I will create them manually.

[qdrives]

I agree with robertferanec . Often, rooms are not useful. There are some instances where they are.
See also my comment here: https://designhelp.fedevel.com/forum...7193#post17193