> Does anyone else wish to have the ability of at least reviewing and > possibly adjusting the priority of PCB design rules? > > I envisage a sort of spread sheet/grid arrangement where all the rules are > shown in their order of priority. There could be a drop list allowing the > user to filter the displayed rules according to type (All Rules, > Clearance, Plane Connection Style, etc). > > Currently, it is sometimes difficult to determine what the order of > application of the various rules will be. > > Even better that simply reviewing the rules would be the ability of > promoting/demoting rule priorities. There should still be the default > priorities but with manual override. Maybe rules which have a manually set > priority could be displayed differently in the rules dialogs (bolded, > italics?) or there could be an extra column showing the rule priority. I > have not thought of all the details... > > Ian Wilson I have recently tried it out, after having vague recollections that such a feature existed. With the default menu for the Pcb Editor, a right mouse button click invokes a popup menu, which contains "Applicable Unary Rules..." and "Applicable Binary Rules..." entries. When one of these items is selected, you will be asked to click on either one primitive or two, after which a dialog box is invoked which lists what currently defined Design Rules apply to the primitive object (or two objects) in question. For each type of Design Rule, the associated Design Rules are listed, in order of dominance (most dominant rule top-most). Disabled rules are depicted with the use of strike-through text, while an accompanying tick indicates the most dominant enabled rule, while the remaining rules (enabled or otherwise) are accompanied by a cross instead. I suspect that this could match your interest in being able to review Design Rules, along with the order of dominance for these. I would like some time to fully think through your suggestion of being able to promote and demote Design Rules, but off-hand, this would not *always* make sense; I would not see too much merit in being able to demote a pad-specific Design Rule below a board-specific Design Rule, for instance. The current implementation does not support some types of Design Rules being defined in some ways, e.g. it is not always possible to specify a region as a qualifying criterion. As such, a case could be made for refining the existing implementation so that the implementation of all types of Design Rules are as "uniform" as possible. But something that Protel really should do, and especially if they want their product to still be able to run on "consumer" versions of Windows (Win 95, 98, and ME), is to do something about the user interface for Design Rules. I do not fully comprehend why the existing dialog box requires so much in the way of resources, but the current implementation does need to be overhauled, arguably even at the risk of having to cope with new bugs (before these are then ironed out). Design Rules are a pretty big topic; perhaps it would be better to focus on whether the current set of available Design Rules caters for what users want when designing "real world" PCBs. Can the KeepOut layer be specified as a layer when defining Clearance Rules, for instance? Regards, Geoff Harland. ----------------------------- E-Mail Disclaimer The Information in this e-mail is confidential and may be legally privileged. It is intended solely for the addressee. Access to this e-mail by anyone else is unauthorised. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure, copying, distribution or any action taken or omitted to be taken in reliance on it, is prohibited and may be unlawful. Any opinions or advice contained in this e-mail are confidential and not for public display. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * To post a message: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * * To leave this list visit: * http://www.techservinc.com/protelusers/subscrib.html * - or email - * mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?body=leave%20proteledaforum * * Contact the list manager: * mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * * Browse or Search previous postings: * http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
