| FreePCB User Guide | Version 1.2

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5. PCB Layout (continued)

5.5 Layer List and Selection Mask

These are two vertical lists in the FreePCB window, to the left of the layout area.

5.51 Layer List

This is a list of all of the drawing layers in use by the project. Next to the name of each layer is a small square showing its color. If the layer has been made invisible, the square will be white with an "X" through it (such as "inner 1" and "inner 2" in the example). You can toggle each layer from visible to invisible by clicking on the square.

The active layer for routing ("top copper" in the example below) will be identified with an arrowhead. You can change the active routing layer by pressing a numeric key on the keyboard (i.e. keys "1" through "8"), or by clicking on the name of the layer in the list. The active routing layer will always be drawn "on top" of the other layers in the layout window.

The color for each layer can be modified by selecting Layers from the View menu, which pops up the View/Edit Layers dialog, as shown below. Click on the buttons in the Edit column to change the colors. You can also change the visibility of layers in this dialog.

5.52 Selection Mask

Items in the layout are selected for editing by clicking on them or drawing a rectangle around them with the mouse. Since items may overlap one another, sometimes it may be difficult to select exactly the item(s) that you want. In this case, the selection mask can be used to enable or disable the selection of different item types. It consists of a list of these types, with a colored box next to each one. A green box means that the item type can be selected, while a red box means that it can't. You can toggle the state of each box by clicking on it.

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