Cut, Copy & Paste Tools

Parent page: Commands

Summary

Manipulating and editing design content is a daily task for a designer, with commands such as Cut, Copy and Paste being a standard and often-used part of their editing toolkit. That means these commands must be easily accessible and behave in a precise and predictable manner. As per standard software editing behavior, objects targeted for a Cut or Copy action must be selected first.

Details

Cut, Copy and Paste commands are available in the following ways:

• Home | Clipboard | in both the Schematic and the Schematic Library editor.
• The standard shortcut keys, Ctrl+X (Cut), Ctrl+C (Copy), Crl+V (Paste).

The Cut and Copy commands put the selected content onto the CircuitStudio clipboard, and the Paste command takes the last cut/copied content from the clipboard and places it into the active schematic sheet. The Cut and Copy buttons on the Ribbon become available when there are objects selected in the workspace, the Paste button becomes available once something has been cut or copied to the clipboard.

Putting Content onto the Clipboard

When the Cut or Copy command is run, the currently selected objects are immediately placed on the clipboard.

Getting Content off the Clipboard

The current clipboard content can be pasted into an open schematic sheet or an open schematic library. As well as the Paste button (Home | Clipboard | ). You can also use the Ctrl+V shortcut to paste the latest clipboard contents into the current document.

The content will appear floating on the cursor, held at at a point approximately in the center of the set of objects being pasted. If the clipboard included electrical objects (such as components, wires, net labels, etc.,), the content being pasted will be held by the hotspot of the electrical object nearest the center of the object set; if there are no electrical objects then the geometric center is used.

The content can be positioned using the mouse, constrained by the current snap grid. Alternatively, press the arrow keys on the keyboard to step in increments of the grid. Hold Shift to step in increments of 10 x grid.

A circuit being pasted into a new schematic sheet.

If you are pasting into a library, every component on the clipboard is pasted into that library and given the same Symbol Reference name it had in the schematic. Duplicate components have an incrementing numeric suffix added, as shown in the image below.

The same copied content being pasted into the Schematic Library editor. Right-click then select Paste (left image). The result is shown on the right.

Pasting an Array in the Schematic Library Editor

The Schematic Library Editor also supports the ability to quickly paste a copied object (or objects) as an array with specific spacing. With the object(s) copied to the clipboard, use the Home | Clipboard |  » Paste Array command from the main menus. The Setup Paste Array dialog will open in which you can define the array.

If the copied object involves text, the alpha or numeric suffix can be incremented by defined steps also. The Setup Paste Array dialog takes the effort out of defining pins for the symbol of a component, with the ability to increment both designator and display name independently, and in ascending (alpha or numeric values) or descending (numerical values only) increments.

How Unique IDs are Handled During Cut/Copy - Paste

Each component in a schematic is assigned a unique ID when it is initially placed. This ID is used for a number of software functions, such as matching the same component between the schematic and the PCB. When a cut or copied component is pasted from the clipboard, it is automatically assigned a new unique ID. This is done to ensure that every component remains unique. Keep this behavior in mind if you are restructuring a schematic design, for example, cutting a single large schematic into a number of smaller schematics. If it has already been synchronized to the PCB, the schematic-to-PCB component UID links will no longer match for those components that were cut and pasted. When you perform a design update, you will be prompted to match by designator instead. UIDs can be re-synchronized by running the Tools | PCB Links | Component Links command in the PCB editor.