At 10:24 AM 11/5/01 +1300, Wayne Trow wrote: >Ive got a design that was made a long time ago by someone else and the pcb >has no net information associated with free primitives (traces). > >Updating from schematic doesn't seem to fix it. Thats with "Assign net to >connected copper" checked.
This is a case where using Netlist load (Design/NetlistManager/LoadNetlist as I recall) instead of Update from Schematic may be easier to troubleshoot. Create a netlist from the Schematic, then load that into PCB. A series of macros will be created. Right-click on the macro display and save it as a text file. Search the text file for Error messages. One possibility is that components do not exist on the board, instead there are only free primitives. Yes, I've encountered designs like that, done by engineers who didn't want to take the time to create real footprints, etc. They checked the board by having two engineers work together to mark it off against the schematic. Of course, the whole thing would have taken much less time if they had done it right in the first place, but reality does not have to make sense.... By the way, in boards which have been checked in this way, I have sometimes found errors. Generally they were not errors that would cause the assembled PCB to fail, though they could drive a technician mad; gates might be swapped or a series resistor-capacitor swapped, a bypass capacitor might be unconnected, etc. If the nets are not loading into the pads, obviously the process that assigns nets from connected copper is not going to work. So fix problems in the netlist load first, then worry about connected copper. One of the most common problems is pad names not matching between the schematic symbol and the PCB footprint. Names must match *exactly*. Once the pads are all correctly assigned nets -- you can generate a netlist from the board that can be compared with the original netlist, if you want to be sure -- you might then look for shorts. If two nets are shorted together, some or all of the primitives in those nets may not receive netlist assignments. You must eliminate those shorts. (Netlist generation from PCB is of two kinds: one generates a netlist which reflects the actual connections on the board, i.e., what the copper implements, the other simply dumps a netlist from what is loaded into the pads. I was talking, in the last paragraph, about the second kind, from which you could check pad net assignments independent of the tracks connecting pads.) Having primitives outside the workspace may also cause troubles, but that would be relatively rare. [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] * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
