<snip>
> As for a reason, when starting the PCB I personally like having some
> method of finding the components on the schematic in an orderly numerical
> fashion. Just the same as at the completion of the PCB some people want
the
> designators re-ordered in a positional manner to the PCB locations. For
> general discussions in meetings someone mentions C23, where the hell is
C23?
> I like finding it somewhere close to C22, C24, a little farther away from
> C26, etc. Otherwise sometimes you can spend 5 minutes searching your
> multipage schematic just to make sure everyone knows which cap is C23
before
> the discussion can continue.
>
> Brad Velander,
I have mentioned this previously, but this thread makes it valid for me to
mention it again. If you "print" schematic files to an Acrobat file, and
then provide that Acrobat file to those requiring/authorised to view this,
they can use Acrobat's "search" feature to locate a particular component,
e.g. C23.
Last year, a fellow employee requested me to provide similarly "searchable"
designators within Acrobat files containing Assembly Drawing printouts
produced from PCB files. My initial impression was that that was not
possible, because text strings within PCB files have traditionally been
converted into graphical data within printouts, and as such, can't be
detected by Acrobat's "search" feature. However, I experimented with the
"Windows fonts" feature of the Power Print Server, and found that selecting
the usage of these fonts does in fact result in the subsequently produced
Acrobat files containing searchable text.
There is a fly in the ointment though. If the "Mirrored" option is *not*
selected in a Printout (definition), and the text strings being printed out
are *not* mirrored, the preview display of the Printout looks OK, but
vertically oriented strings customarily end up offset from where they should
be. (Horizontal strings are OK; I do not know what happens with diagonal
strings, as I can not think of any instance when I have created a printout
containing such strings, but I suspect that they also could be problematic.)
To deal with this problem, the Mirrored option needs to be selected in the
Printout (definition), and to compensate for the consequent mirrored nature
of the printout, the PCB file (or at least the entire contents of all the
layers which are being included in the printout) needs to be mirrored as
well. When this is done, the preview display of the Printout does not look
good (vertically oriented strings are depicted in locations offset from
their real locations), but the actual printout is OK (which makes this
situation the opposite of that experienced when an un-mirrored PCB is
printed out in un-mirrored form).
I have already reported this to Protel, and actually did so before SP6 was
released. As this was not fixed by SP6, I am assuming that either my report
occurred too late in the piece to be incorporated in SP6, and/or that the
problem was not deemed sufficiently serious to rectify (or not serious
enough to rectify, relative to how much effort would be required to achieve
that?). But I remain hopeful that this shortcoming will be rectified at some
stage...
Regards,
Geoff Harland.
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