Re: [PEDA] P99SE Annotate component sorting order.

2003-03-06 Thread Brad Velander
Jami,
   thanks for the thoughts but I really don't believe your issue is related. I have 
modified the manner in which I annotate this schematic and proven my own suspicions 
that it was matching the part type fields to obtain an annotation order for parts that 
were not multi-parts.

Note that from my example every one of the R15, R16, R17 , R18 resistors that I had 
indicated were out of order, contained the same part type value (company part number). 
They were not entered in any particular order and actually were added gradually over a 
number of revisions so there is no hope of an entry order type issue.

   To confirm what I suspected I reset the schematic annotation. I deselected the 
match by part Type selection. I annotated the schematic. I got exactly what I would 
have expected originally, all of my resistors (and other parts) were annotated 
according to their physical location within the schematic pages. No R15s or R16s out 
of location amongst R4X or R5X parts. However, I also had annotations of ICs that 
assigned individual designations to each individual part of a multipart device.
   Solution: add a second and third step to annotating. After running the annotation 
with no match by part type, globally edit the IC designators back to U?. Select 
annotate (? parts only) select match by Part Type, run annotation to correctly 
annotate ICs.

The big question is, do I have to keep doing this? Is there something set somewhere 
that I don't know about? Is there another option that is not quite so time consuming?

Sincerely,
Brad Velander.

Lead PCB Designer
Norsat International Inc.
Microwave Products
Tel   (604) 292-9089 (direct line)
Fax  (604) 292-9010
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.norsat.com


 -Original Message-
 From: JaMi Smith [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Sent: Tuesday, March 04, 2003 1:56 PM
 To: Protel EDA Forum
 Cc: JaMi Smith
 Subject: Re: [PEDA] P99SE Annotate component sorting order.
 
 
 Brad,
 
 The following may meander a little from the basic problem you are
 describing, but I think it is nonetheless directly relevant, 
 and actually
 address the problem in an indirect way.
 
 It sounds like Protel suffers from the same problem that 
 many, if not most,
 of these EDA software systems do, in that, the manner in 
 which the internal
 databases store information is in most cases what I call Entry Order
 Driven, that is, that the first part entered in the design 
 stays at the top
 of the database list (and any subsequent parts of the same 
 type may (or may
 not) get put up there with it), and that all connections are 
 put in their
 own little database list in the order in which they were 
 entered, etc.,
 etc., etc., and that all of these entries in all of the 
 different internal
 databases never loose their original position in the internal 
 database list,
 or are moved from their original Entry Order, unless 
 possibly it is to
 sort them by some other parameter that is totally unrelated 
 to the actual
 electrical design, such as the part number of the devices, or 
 the footprint
 type of the devices, or the physical length of the actual 
 connection line on
 the physical schematic, etc., etc., etc., which is again, 
 totally unrelated
 to the electrical function of the schematic.
BIG SNIP
 
 Brad, the simple answer may just be to delete R15, R16, R17, 
 and R18 (and
 and any other of their counterpart), from the schematic, 
 cycle the design a
 few times , and then re-enter them. Then they may actually 
 renumber where
 you think they should, but then again, you will have now 
 screwed up all of
 the connections to those parts, which are now going to be at 
 the bottom of
 the list for lines and connections, and hence nets.
 
 Oh Well, I think that you will at least begin to see the scope of the
 problem.
 
 Actually, why don't you try manually numbering them to be 
 what you want, and
 then Updating, and  then Annotating again.
 
 Needless to say, I could ramble on about this for days and 
 weeks and months,
 and as a result get so upset as to even maybe write a program 
 to do it right
 myself, just to calm down again.
 
 Enough for now.
 
 JaMi


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Re: [PEDA] P99SE Annotate component sorting order.

2003-03-06 Thread Rich Thompson
Brad, 

I may misunderstand here but:

Turn off the Group parts together if matched by: and it will annotate
directly in position order as you wish and not group together eg 10k
0402.

Whenever I need to always group multipart components I always add
another comment to the user fields and group by the user field too.  Eg,
for an quad opamp I might put quad1 in all four parts user field 10, it
then correctly keeps them grouped together.  I never bother turning off
Group parts together if matched by: because I always reannoate from
the pcb (our techs like it that way, easier to find) 

Hope that helps 

Rich

-Original Message-
From: Brad Velander [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: 03 March 2003 23:30
To: Protel EDA Forum List Server (E-mail)
Subject: [PEDA] P99SE Annotate component sorting order.


Hi all,
this is an issue that I am sure has been around a while. On this
design I am working it has just become too much for me to accept, is
there something I am missing or a work around?
Trying to annotate a two page schematic it keeps pre-sorting and
ordering it's annotate based on the part type information. It is not
simply using the part type information for matching purposes, it is
doing matched part type designator assignments first.
For example, here is what I am seeing.

I have a bunch of resistors on page two of the schematic. They are being
numbered R38, R39, R40, R42, etc. sorted according to the specified
annotate pattern. Then the next resistor may be R15. A short number of
resistors follow the original number pattern R43, R44, R45. Then I get
another one R16! The part type data of the R16 is the same as R15 and is
different than all the other mentioned resistors. On the same page I
noted some resistors of the same value/part type information that were
numbered R17  R18 even though the other resistors around them are
numbered in the 50s.

What P99SE is doing is annotating according to the specified
pattern only when it finds a part type that was not previously matched
by the part type. Parts with matching part types get annotated in the
order that the first component of that value was found on the first page
of the schematic, then it purposely searches out parts with the same
part type to annotate next in sequence even across other schematic
pages.

On my configuration for annotating I do have the Group parts
together if matched by: set to part type. However this is only for
grouping multipart symbols, is it not? Matching multiple parts from a
single package? Or am I carrying old baggage from OrCAD or other
packages, the Help file agrees with me though?

Sincerely,
Brad Velander.

Lead PCB Designer
Norsat International Inc.
Microwave Products
Tel   (604) 292-9089 (direct line)
Fax  (604) 292-9010
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.norsat.com





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[PEDA] P99SE Annotate component sorting order.

2003-03-04 Thread Brad Velander
Hi all,
this is an issue that I am sure has been around a while. On this design I am 
working it has just become too much for me to accept, is there something I am missing 
or a work around?
Trying to annotate a two page schematic it keeps pre-sorting and ordering it's 
annotate based on the part type information. It is not simply using the part type 
information for matching purposes, it is doing matched part type designator 
assignments first.
For example, here is what I am seeing.

I have a bunch of resistors on page two of the schematic. They are being numbered R38, 
R39, R40, R42, etc. sorted according to the specified annotate pattern. Then the next 
resistor may be R15. A short number of resistors follow the original number pattern 
R43, R44, R45. Then I get another one R16! The part type data of the R16 is the same 
as R15 and is different than all the other mentioned resistors. On the same page I 
noted some resistors of the same value/part type information that were numbered R17  
R18 even though the other resistors around them are numbered in the 50s.

What P99SE is doing is annotating according to the specified pattern only when 
it finds a part type that was not previously matched by the part type. Parts with 
matching part types get annotated in the order that the first component of that value 
was found on the first page of the schematic, then it purposely searches out parts 
with the same part type to annotate next in sequence even across other schematic pages.

On my configuration for annotating I do have the Group parts together if 
matched by: set to part type. However this is only for grouping multipart symbols, is 
it not? Matching multiple parts from a single package? Or am I carrying old baggage 
from OrCAD or other packages, the Help file agrees with me though?

Sincerely,
Brad Velander.

Lead PCB Designer
Norsat International Inc.
Microwave Products
Tel   (604) 292-9089 (direct line)
Fax  (604) 292-9010
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.norsat.com



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* 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:
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*
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Re: [PEDA] P99SE Annotate component sorting order.

2003-03-04 Thread JaMi Smith
 had a friend who I worked with at Datatape, and
he spent his day compiling complex FutureNet designs for Xilink parts, which
would take hours at a time to compile, and never route to completion, and
after each compile he would delete a few insignificant parts, and cycle the
schematic, and then re-enter the same parts and connections just as they
were, just to re-order the internal database lists, and then he would
re-compile the same design, which would ultimately route to completion after
repeating the cycle for several times, if not for several days. He would
then repeat the process two or three more times again after he had routed to
completion, just to try and get a little better final route for the design.
Sometimes this is what you have to do to get a stupid piece of software to
dance to the tune that you want it to.

Do you think that Protel is any different than any of these earlier systems
in its basic design?

We have faster computers with faster processors and oodles of megabytes of
memory, and better displays with a gazillion colors, and much more complex
functions pre-done in terms of functions or subroutines or system calls
or operating system procedures, etc., etc., etc., all of which make it
possible to do something easier and faster, but basically, it's the same
ol' same ol'  thing that we were doing twenty years ago, with a few more
requirements and a few more features and a few more bells and whistles,
all of which still do not quite work the way that they should.

You have to remember that the computer in front of you on which you run
Protel is just a dumb and stupid little box that can only do a couple of
hundred different dumb and stupid little instructions like moves and
compares and calculations, by which it is programmed to perform slightly
larger tasks, and that even those simple tasks are dumb and stupid, and only
become useful by their amazing speed and repetition of those simple little
tasks which ultimately allow them to perform large functions, like screw up
a schematic in Protel.

The same old problem is that the databases in Protel are simply a bunch of
databases containing Entry Order Lists, and the different routines in
Protel simply perform hundreds if not thousands of simple yet specific
different little tasks on each of the many different little Entry Order
database lists to ultimately transform all of those original Entry Order
database lists into yet many new and different kinds of Entry Order
database lists, which can be used to perform different specific functions,
such as graphically display lines and circles of different sizes, and
locations, and colors on your display, or print them on your printer, or
output them as an yet another list, which to some extent is yet just another
Entry Order List called a Gerber file.

This is why I SHOUT AND YELL AND SCREAM and rant and rave about the people
at Altuim / Protel needing to not only understand how to program software,
but also understand the design process and the electronics industry in which
the end product on which they are working is used. You would be amazed how
much better a product can be when the people programming it not only know
how to program, but also know how to draw a schematic and at least know a
little bit about the basic operation of what the
schematic represents and how the circuits flows. Yeah, I know, sadly that's
even too much to ask of most designers, let alone programmers. Oh well.

Brad, the simple answer may just be to delete R15, R16, R17, and R18 (and
and any other of their counterpart), from the schematic, cycle the design a
few times , and then re-enter them. Then they may actually renumber where
you think they should, but then again, you will have now screwed up all of
the connections to those parts, which are now going to be at the bottom of
the list for lines and connections, and hence nets.

Oh Well, I think that you will at least begin to see the scope of the
problem.

Actually, why don't you try manually numbering them to be what you want, and
then Updating, and  then Annotating again.

Needless to say, I could ramble on about this for days and weeks and months,
and as a result get so upset as to even maybe write a program to do it right
myself, just to calm down again.

Enough for now.

JaMi

- Original Message -
From: Brad Velander [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: Protel EDA Forum List Server (E-mail) [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Monday, March 03, 2003 3:29 PM
Subject: [PEDA] P99SE Annotate component sorting order.


Hi all,
this is an issue that I am sure has been around a while. On this design I am
working it has just become too much for me to accept, is there something I
am missing or a work around?
Trying to annotate a two page schematic it keeps pre-sorting and ordering
it's annotate based on the part type information. It is not simply using the
part type information for matching purposes, it is doing matched part type
designator assignments first.
For example, here is what I am