Encounter Quick Tip: Dimming the Display with F12

I remember when I first started working with the Cooper & Chyan Technology (CCT) router back in the day. It had this great feature where you could darken the display for everything in the design other than what you had selected. This was particularly useful when you were trying to route a net because it focused your eyes on the task at hand while still providing visibility to the rest of the design that you had to avoid bumping into when making wiring edits.

We've had a similar feature in Encounter for quite some time but a lot of people don't know about it. Here's how it works...

In the design below I've selected one net with the "selectNet" command. Can you see it highlighted in the design below? Neither can I, because the white it is highlighted in is so similar to the color used for M4 and M6 routing:

To help make the selected objects more visible, go to Edit->Dim Background (which is bound to the F12 key):

The selected objects should remain bright while non-selected objects will be dimmed, giving focus to the selected objects:

This works for any selected object in the design. Give it a try next time you're having trouble seeing an object in the design.

Hope this helps.

-Bob Dwyer