Default Designator and Comment Font Being Changed on Me

Something odd about Altium is that there doesn't seem to be a way to set a universal font. The default is Times New Roman, and frankly, I'm just not usually a fan of serif fonts on CAD files. I'm just not used to it. Apparently you have to set the default font for each separate thing. I did that, but have still been having issues with this being reverted. Below is a message I almost sent to support:

I'm having an issue with my default fonts for designator and comment being reverted to Times New Roman.

I placed a component from the Vault onto my schematic, then to have a little more control over it, I selected it, copied, then pasted into one of my own schematic libraries. I created a footprint for it, then compiled the integrated library.

Meanwhile, I set my default fonts for the designator and comment to Arial with different justification and sizes.

When I try to place that part, the designator and comment are changed to Times New Roman 10 pt. There was another part (resistor) I copied the symbol from the "Miscellaneous Devices.IntLib". When I try to place that one, the reference designator stays in Arial, but the comment reverts back to Times New Roman. . .

The issue is that there is not an obvious way to control anything about the designator and comment other than the whole system default.

It's about this time I took one more look around, and found my solution.

While in a SchLib: Tools > Document Options...

The Properties window/pane will change and you'll see an option saying "Show Comment/Designator", helpfully highlighted below:

Wow! Look at that super useful option! I sure can't imagine why anyone might want selected as default! It's not like I might have a better idea than a dumb program of where to artfully put a designator that's close yet unobtrusive!

Here's the appropriate help article.

Altium

About a month ago I've started using and learning Altium Designer 19.1.5 as part of some extra engineering work. Up until then I've spent my entire (albeit short) professional career using EAGLE; as such, I have certain workflow habits ingrained into myself. Because of this, I am continually running into things that I find ridiculous and dumb about Altium.

To add insult to injury, this $8000 retail piece of software has bad documentation, terrible linking between pages, and even worse searching of those documentation pages. On top of that, their "bugcrunch" and forums are, as far as I can tell, unindexed, so you can't even use a good search engine.

My current conspiracy theory is that this is all done so you're obliged to re-up at $2000 a year or whatever so you have someone to ask when you inevitably run into something that shouldn't have even been an issue to start with.

As a result, whenever I'm having trouble doing something, I'm going to try to keep a record of my solutions as I find them, whether that's by clicking around, or getting help from support. These posts will probably be written assuming the reader knows the basics of Altium, so be forewarned.

Quick Update

Not that I think anyone reads this, but I thought I might go ahead and post a quick update on my life. I have some thoughts related to this blog that I may or may not continue with, but I figured this would be a good start.

I graduated from UNT in May 2016 with two bachelors degrees: one in electrical engineering and one in mathematics. For about a year all I was doing was play music and apply to jobs; I started playing with a swing band in I think September 2016 and was playing with a few other groups. I got an electrical engineering (EE) job in May 2017 and have been working there since. I'm fortunate to still have time and flexibility to play lots of music, and have recently started working there less and doing some other EE a little bit elsewhere.

Allen Wrenches

I got a new pedal steel guitar recently, and it needed some adjustments, some of which require an allen wrench. My dad had an extra set I could use, the only problem was that it was missing one. No problem, I can just find a replacement one. My first stop was Googling what seemed to be the brand (Bondhus), so I quickly found the website. After looking around, I found what I needed, but I also came across this:

(Image courtesy Northern Tool)

Nope. You're not insane (well, maybe). That's exactly what it looks like. 14K gold plated allen wrenches. The thing I find fascinating about these is that they are not cheap aftermarket diamond encrusted bling tools because why the heck not. These are sold as professional tools, and as having a real use in the real world! Not only that, but they have a perfect 5-star rating on Amazon!
I'm not making any derogatory comment about them, I just felt the need to post something, didn't have anything else to post, and discovered these tonight.
On that note, is there anything in particular that y'all would like me to do? I'd really like to post some more, but I'm pretty limited in what I can do at UNT. I'd post the occasional school assignment, but I'm afraid of getting into some weird "academic dishonesty" trouble for copying the work that I posted. There is a Cessna 185 kit I have thought about doing, but that might be a bit too much. It could definitely be fun though.

Project Euler

Well, I haven't really done much of anything in the last six or so months. I've been working on a road case for my steel guitar, I might try to post that soon. The main thing I've been working on besides school is a really cool website called Project Euler. It's basically a site that has a bunch of different interesting math problems to solve in any way you see fit. Since I took a class last semester that focused on MATLAB, I've been doing them in that. I'm not sure is there's a completely mathematical way to solve all of them, but if you enjoy programming, or want to get into it, I highly recommend the site. If you're afraid of math, I still recommend trying it out, because the problems are really kind of more "number" based than "math" based.

Quick Update

Well as I'm sure you have noticed by now, my backlog of posts has been used up. At this point I have a backlog of post titles, but I have yet to write the actual posts.

Bottleneck Slides

At the beginning of the summer, I decided to take up yet another hobby; luckily this time though, it is related to others I have, not too time consuming, and best of all, cheap: making guitar slides out of wine bottle necks. All it takes is a bottle scorer and wine bottles. I got my scorer at Hobby Lobby, but it is also available on Amazon.

It's simple to use as long as you actually follow the directions. I actually did it a bit differently than the directions specified, but I still employed the same principles.
First, a little bit of science and clarification: whenever somebody talks about "cutting" glass, it is almost guaranteed that they are not actually cutting it. More often than not, it is actually controlled breaking: the way "cutting" glass works is by making a very fine score; the finer the score, the cleaner the "cut" or separation. When cutting a pane of glass for something like a window, a line is usually scribed along a straightedge, and the excess piece is carefully tapped until it cleanly breaks off. Bottlenecks are a little different though: since they are round, you obviously can't use a straightedge, and tapping the glass (though sometimes used) will almost always end with an at least somewhat jagged edge. What is needed then, is a way to score the glass, and make it want to crack, but in a more controlled manner.
Solving the problem of how to score the glass is fairly simple; all you need is a way to make a straight score on a pivot, which is the purpose of the bottle scorer.
Actually getting the glass to break cleanly is a little trickier. Enter thermal shock: a way to break the glass without hitting it.
Basically, thermal shock will often cause stuff to crack due to uneven heating, and glass is especially susceptible to it. All that is needed is a source of high temperature, and a source of low temperature. These can range from candles to burning string soaked with lighter fluid to blowtorches to hot water from tap, likewise sticking stuff in a freezer to ice to cold water from the tap. I used the combination of a hot water kettle and cold water from the tap.
Now that I've explained the basic science behind it, here's the process:
The first step is to line the scorer up perpendicular to the glass. Next I went around once with the scorer, going as lightly as possible while still making a score. The next step is to run it under boiling water and cold water over the score until it finally breaks. At this point, all it needs is some sanding of the edges to break the very sharp corners.

I think the rest of the bottle looks really cool, and I always feel like it has to be good for "something," but I haven't quite figured out what that something is yet.

Here is the finished product: