At 06:43 PM 2/15/2002 -0500, Jun Gong wrote:
>I have a schematic and a PCB. They are pretty matching except the
>designators. This is caused by manually layout of the PCB. There are
>several repeated and similar zones in PCB, so I just do copy the first
>routed zone to other places.
>
>I compared the 2 netlist files (one generated from PCB, the other from
>schematic) they are matching.
>
>The problem is how can I modify the designators in schematics so that
>the schematic could be the identical to the PCB. There are 500 parts
>involved, so I don't want to do it manually.
As Mr. Harm noted, the problem here is the classic repeat section problem,
and the synchronizer cannot handle that. At least not yet.
It is much easier to deal with this from the beginning, by numbering the
designators on the schematic or schematic section being repeated in a way
that will make it easy to change later. For example, resistors might be
numbered RX00 ... RX07 if there were eight of them. Then, when the
schematic is multiplied, the Xs can be globally edited page-wise or
selection-wise to 1, 2 ... n using {X=n} in the copy attributes. In case
you can't read it, those are curly brackets, not parentheses.
The PCBs would be laid out from the original, unedited sheet, with the Xs
in the reference designators. Once one section is complete and checked
thoroughly, it can be copied, and each time it is copied, it will be
selected when pasted, and the parts can be, again, globally edited
selection-wise to the desired final numbers.
One note on PCBs with large blocks (as well as on schematics with many
repeat sections): get them right and complete before you copy them,
including final placement of reference designators. It is *much* easier to
fix problems before multiplying up the sections.
In the PCB editors, while the sections are being copied, copied track and
vias will not have the correct net attributes. Though one can remedy this
by the commands (or the synchronizer option) that assigns nets to connected
copper, I generally copy parts only, first, then get the correct net
assignments from schematic synchronization, *then* I copy track and vias,
which will automatically inherit the correct nets, if I recall correctly.
There are other ways to accomplish this task, perhaps others will give some.
As to the situation of our inquirer, one way to recover is to delete the
components in the repeat sections (If there is any custom wiring within
sections, I'd leave the track and vias on the PCB), and, essentially do
what I mentioned. It won't take all that long if the sections were laid out
identically. If they are not identical, still, the renumbering problem can
be reduced to one of moving each part into its new position to match the
layout. In this case I might leave the original parts in position until
after I've placed the correct ones.
Note that one can automatically annotate Schematic parts in numerical
ranges, using the Advanced Options tab on the Annotate tool.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Abdulrahman Lomax
Easthampton, Massachusetts USA
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