Can't delete a rigid/flex substack from altium 19

Question

so I've recently been learning altium and I'm one of those learners who tends to click things to see what they do and then figure out how to undo it afterwards. Unfortunately I've now run into a problem with that method because at some point I clicked the "rigid/flex design" option in the features tab of the layer stack manager and have managed to save the whole project in a state where I can't delete that substack.

I open the layer stack manager, deselect the "rigid/flex" option and it returns to a normal stack up, complete with a bottom solder mask layer (which I'm now trying to add) and save the stack. But when I reopen the layer stack manager, the substack is there, and the rigid/flex option is still active and I can't add a bottom solder mask to the pcb.

I can't find anything on the internet that say's anything other than "just delete the substack" but the problem is I can't delete it at all, the bin icon is greyed out.

Does anyone know of a way to undo that without just recreating the project? I'm worried about misaligning screw holes and connector tabs and the like and I'd rather know what I did so I can undo it in future rather than just nuke the thing and start again.

Answer 1

Ran into the same problem myself just a few moments ago (this was an old design imported into version 19).

Opening the layer stack manager for the 1st time caused my design to gain a sub-stack. It also was showing an error because both the stacks had the same name. I changed the name of the sub-stack and that fixed that error, but I still couldn't delete it.

The delete icon was grayed out.

I could add (and delete) further sub stacks.

To revert to just one PCB stack, you need to go to the features drop down box on the top right of the window; there you will see a tick next to 'rigid-flex'. Click on the text 'rigid-flex' to turn it off (this is really not the usual intuitive UIF we expect from Altium) and success - the sub-stack (and flex-rigid option) goes away.

We are now back to the same state the board was in, when it was last opened in an older version (in my case Altium16).

Answer 2

Depending on how you've configured Altium to work, you may be able to go into Storage Manager and revert to a previous version of your PCB, even though you've (I assume) not explicitly configured a Version Control System (such as Subversion or Git).

Altium consume a fair bit of storage (in relation to the active files) to keep these available, and occasionally it comes in handy.

Answer 3

In most cases you cannot remove the layer stack because it is used in the PCB. In the PCB Editor, open the "Board Planning Mode" (Press "1") and change the layer stack to "Board Layer Stack" in the "Default Layer Stack Region". After that, you can delete "Board Layer Stack #1" in the "Layer Stack Editor".