Hello All, Several months ago, We have all took our shots at blasting Altium for DXP . I would like to hear some positive feedback on the progress on DXP schematic. I am not sure how good the schematic tools are, or if there was a big improvement from 99SE to DXP. I would like to hear from some of the experienced designers out there about any real advantages to switching to DXP for schematic. I work with a few engineers that are eager to upgrade if the tools have an advantage. Any inputs? (positive only)
Second, 100 percent of my work involves PCB design. I sit at my computer on average 10 hours a day for 6 days a week , 365 days a year. Since I am an independant design bureau , my approach for laying out a board is very systematic, no frills, and very efficient. My approach is pretty much an assembly line process. One of the assembly line tasks that I find myself spending time on, is fanning out components. The reason I fan out components manually are two fold: 1. No router ( Spectra included) can fan out as clean as I can. Clean = good via spacing which provides for open routing channels in both the horizontal and vertical directions. 2. Manually fanning out allows me to inspect my layout for discreet components that are rotated or need better placement. 3. While fanning out , I also route critical lines. With this approach, a clean fanout on every component, I achieve a very high autorouting percentage. Generally 99.9 - 100 percent. So..........I was thinking how to improve DXP ( since we wont see enhancements to 99SE). We were using P-CAD several years ago to route Die on MCMs. The Die pads were always fanned out the same. X mils away from the die, bonding pads were all the same size, pads spacing the same on all fanouts, etc ( same rules applied to all die fannout ). We used an inhouse software guru to write a simple DOS program to fan out the Die. A real time savings was realized. I came up with this new idea:. I keep a separate lib called "my spectra " lib. It contains, patterns which I use for fanout. I copy the tracks and vias from i.e. component QPF208FAN (my specta.lib) and paste them to the QFP208 on my pcb. Presto I have a fanned out part which meets my routing requirements. I repeat the copy command as required, on large boards it can take several days to fanout. If I dont spend days fanning out, I will spend more time cleaning bad routes. I could create parts in PCB lib which are already fanned out, but this method is also more difficult to clean up afterwards and does not allow removal of extra vias on "no net" pads. While I have used the prefanned out lib parts, and it works, there are many other disadvantages to this method. My proposed feature is to create an associated fanout pattern ( in the fanoout library) that can be automaticallly be placed or associated to components on a board. Fanout would be automatic when pressing the buttom "update pcb with fan out pattern" , no crunching required. It can be done within a sub menu of the library, ie you show the component and maybe several fan out patterns you created to choose from. You choose from pattern A ( which could be fanned in ) , pattern B which could be fanned in and out), or any pattern you choose to create. I would realize huge time savings , would any of you ? Any comments? Any comments from Altium? Mike Reagan EDSI Frederick MD * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 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] * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
