At 05:35 PM 10/25/01 -0400, M. Wahab wrote: > > This sounds odd. Was there anything unusual about the footprint? How did > > you do the update, by pressing Update PCB from within the PCBLIb editor? > >That's what I did
From subsequent discussions, it is almost certain that what happened was that the new version of the component had a reference position far from the actual primitives. Or, possibly, the PCB version of the component had a similarly way-off reference position, compensated by the way the component had been placed. > > If you produce a netlist or a component report is the component designator > > still listed? Can you jump to the component designator (with J-C)? > >I tried JC it didn't find it If the component's refdes appears in the list of components (in the panel or in the jump component dialog) but JC does not find it, it is a near certainty that what we have is a wayward reference position for the part. Either the reference position is outside the workspace or the primitives are outside the workspace or both. It may be possible to determine and edit the position of the component with the Panel edit button, but the only reasonably simple way to pull the reference position and the component primitives together is to fix the footprint in the footprint library and update it. In other words, do what should have been done in the first place. Always check that a component has the appropriate reference position before using it or updating it. > > What about the backed up DDB (*.DBK > > is it)? here are at least three forms of backups produced by Protel > > (including the auto-saved files) - have you checked all of these? > >I panicked when this happened and I saved more than twice wich made the >back up >also unusefull. Yes, it is easy to get so worried that our very worry makes things more difficult. When one is concerned that a file might be corrupted, saving it using Save As, changing the name, should be used instead of a simple save. Or use Save Copy As. The former saves the file under the new name and then continues edits *on the new named file.* So your old file remains the same. The latter makes a copy of the file in the database but continues edits on the original file. I'd tend to use Save As if I was concerned, because it does not overwrite the original file. Neither does Save Copy As, except that any further edits, when eventually saved, will overwrite the original. There is no Save As command for copying Design System databases, not within Client. However, if one is concerned about the ddb file itself being corrupted and one does not want to overwrite it, opening up Windows Explorer separately, right-clicking on the ddb file, selecting Copy, and then Paste will write a "Copy of ..." file without modifying the original in any way. Your autobackups should be set to relatively frequent, I'd say 15 minutes max, should be at least 6 levels deep -- this is all configurable under the Client (down-arrow in the upper left corner) menu. That will allow you an hour and a half to discover a problem before you will have lost your file. No harm in having more than that, except the disk space, which is cheap. Autobackups tie up Client while the files are being written, which is the only good reason for not making them *very* frequent. I hope that Protel will include a command stack that saves all commands executed on a file after the last autobackup. This would not only enable complete recovery up to a crash but also would help with finding the cause of some crashes, since one would be able to reconstruct the exact file conditions and operations that led up to the crash. Note that pending operations suspend autobackup. Frequently clear out pending operations with the escape key, which will run back up the stack of pending operations, once per press, until none are left. (Pending operations are sometimes indicated in the command space at the bottom of the screen. Protel allows you to, for example, Place Via while you are in the middle of routing a trace. When you escape from Place Via, you will be back in route mode. You will be able to tell by the form of the cursor. Some new designers keep moving from one command to another, not realizing that commands are stacking up. Escape from each command before starting a new one. Get in the habit of hitting escape when completing commands that hold their mode, like Place Track. >However, I managed to place it in its position again by the tips I got. It wouldn't hurt to tell us what worked.... [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/proteledaforum@techservinc.com * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
