Using Component Classes in Altium with Rooms

When doing layouts in Altium, it is useful to bundle components into Component Classes for organizing into rooms and applying design rules. To do this, I highlight the all the components in the schematic that I want to group (making sure to enable Tools -> Cross Select Mode).

Once this is done, I go to the PCB document where the components have already been imported and I arrange them into a rectangle on part of the PCB (Tools -> Component Placement -> Arrange Within Rectangle). You should get something like the picture below.

Now that you can see all the components you're interested in, you want to draw a Room around the group of components (Design -> Rooms -> Place Rectangular Room). You can press tab and get the dialog shown below. Once you have this dialog up, you can change the name of the room. Here I typed in EthernetRoom and then pressed Ok.

If we double click on the room just created, we'll see 'Component Class 2' was created and all the components we drew in the room selection have been added as members. You can check the defined classes to verify (see below). I'm going to rename this to EthernetClass and then edit the room definition by double clicking on the room rectangle.

Here I'm editing the drop down boxes so that EthernetRoom contains objects that match everything in the EthernetClass Component Class.

Now we've got a room with assigned components in it that can be used for easier component placement. Dragging this room around will move components as well as visible polygons, traces, etc. In addition to placement, rules can be assigned in the Design Rules to Component Classes. Rooms can also be used for Channel designs that have the same schematic and layout repeated multiple times.

Hope you found this one useful and interesting. If you have questions, or other topics in Altium you need help with, comment below and I'll be more than happy to help.