At 01:21 PM 5/17/01 -0600, Jim Muehlberg wrote:
>My PCB is (or so I thought it was) 10000 X 6500 mils as indicated on the
>mechanical layer. BUT, when I go to reports|board information-general,
>is says 10360 x 6785.987 mils.
There are two sets of dimensions given in the Board Information Report. As
stated by another user, the little drawing on the on-screen report shows
the board extents, defined as the difference between the minimum and
maximum x and y positions of every primitive on the board. For the purposes
of this report, the centerline or centerpoint of the primitive is not
relevant; what is reported is derived from the *outline* of the primitive.
So, for example, if you have an empty board file and you place a single 100
mil pad on that board, the board extents will be 100x100 mils, no matter
where in the workspace the pad is placed.
There is another parameter reported, which is the (x,y)minimum. This refers
to the absolute locations, the user origin is irrelevant. If either of
these dimensions is negative, you have a primitive or primitives outside
the workspace.
It is also possible to have primitives outside the workspace in the
positive direction. One can detect this by adding the minimum (x,y) pair to
the board extents pair. If either value is greater than 100K mils, there
are primitives in the positive non-workspace zone. These primitives, unlike
negative workspace primitives, may be visible if one zooms out fully.
The classic method for bringing primitives back into the workspace is to
select them using any of various techniques (such as select outside, but
select all, deselect inside may work better in some cases), place a nice
large pad, select it, and pick it up. The box that shows selection extents
will show you exactly the outer limits of the non-workspace primitive
extents, and you can pull them into the workspace by moving the pad.
Occasionally a primitive might be more than 100 inches outside the
workspace, in which case several moves may be necessary.
It has been argued that Protel should not permit primitives to exist
outside the workspace. I would not agree; but some kind of warning that one
was about to create such a primitive would be useful ( It's usually by
moving a selected item without having deselected others that one did not
intend to move, failing to notice that the selection box was larger than
expected.). Perhaps when the extents go negative or excess positive the
screen would go negative (all colors inverted). That'd be hard to miss! A
dialog box that pops up while moving the block on the cursor would not be a
good idea, but there would be no harm in one which, when the block was
placed, popped up with a warning and asked for a confirmation.)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Abdulrahman Lomax
P.O. Box 690
El Verano, CA 95433
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