At 10:40 AM 1/18/2002 -0500, Fred A Rupinski wrote: > > There may be some way to use cross-probing to select a set of components >on > > Schematic and thus the corresponding components on PCB; this would then be > > used by the Class Generator (Design/Classes/Component/Add/Class Generator) > > to create a class. The class would then be assigned a room. > >This sounds involved. I think it is easier and more intuitive to pre-define >the rooms on the PCB sheet, and then assign components in the normal way >after the PCB is updated from the schematic. However, it might be >instructive to see how far your suggestion takes me, time permitting .... >I'll see.
The point is that you can rather easily and quickly assign a set of selected components to a room. You create a class from the selection and then assign the selection to the room. You can assign components to a room individually, but it multiplies rules and is cumbersome; much easier to create a class for the components and then assign the class -- or classes -- to the room. Note that rooms can also be used to restrict some components to one side of the board.... Yes, conceptually, all this should be controllable from the schematic or, *possibly,* a human-readable file that defines PCB requirements. Such requirements are now typically communicated engineer-to-designer by written memos. If we are lucky. > > But I haven't used cross-probing in Protel. I thought there was a way to >do > > this, but I did not see it off-hand. > > > > >* Is it possible to rotate rooms (including assigned relative component > > >patterns) while editing the PCB? > > > > Yes. Select the objects, including the room, and rotate them together. > > Rooms do not seem to have a select field in the dialog, but they do > > select/deselect with normal mouse/keyboard commands. > >I found it. >(Select)>>Edit>>Move>>Rotate_Selection...(Enter_Rotation_Angle)>>OK>>(Click_ >Cursor_on_Room) gets me there. Sure, this will work, but it is unnecessarily cumbersome unless you want to rotate some angle other than your default rotation settings. Just pick up the selection with the mouse and hit the space bar, the selection should rotate the default value counterclockwise. The installation default is 90 degrees. However, rooms cannot be rotated, it appears, any other angle than 90 degrees. This could be expected from the room edit dialog, which shows no angle field. Note that rooms can be defined to keep components out of a rectangle. Multiple rules may apply to a room, for example, one set that keeps components inside and another that keeps other components outside. The room concept is very, very useful even as it is, our complaints are really only pointers to suggestions that would improve their utility. I had trouble finding a way to graphically edit the extents of a room. The room is drawn on-screen with handles, but was unable to pick up any of the handles, until I remembered that I had the same problem with fills. So I looked in the help files for fills and saw the instructions for graphically editing fills. I had completely overlooked this; it is slightly less than intuitive. If a fill has the focus (give it the focus by clicking on it), click on one of the handles. Just a quick single click, not a held-click or double-click. The cursor will jump to the handle and one can resize the fill. Another click puts the handle down. The off-center handle is used to rotate the fill. Rooms work the same way except that there is no rotation handle. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Abdulrahman Lomax Easthampton, Massachusetts USA * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * To post a message: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * * To leave this list visit: * http://www.techservinc.com/protelusers/leave.html * * Contact the list manager: * mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * * Forum Guidelines Rules: * http://www.techservinc.com/protelusers/forumrules.html * * Browse or Search previous postings: * http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
