| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| PaulR |
Posted - 13 Aug 2010 : 13:36:03
It's great to see that we now have hierarchy design facility and I've just installed V14 to give it a go.
A couple of initial questions/observations:
Port Names: It seems these are assigned in a sequence (a, b, c...) when the block is created or when a new port is added (e.g. by ending a connection on the block outline). The block name is shown next to the block pin, and it can be picked up as the port name in the lower level schematic. Once added, I cannot find any way to rename them to something relevant to the design (e.g. "input", "select"..)
Editing block contents: The main use I would have for blocks is to include a number of copies of identical circuits within a design. There is the "duplicate" function that can be used to generate a new instance of a block symbol and its underlying schematic. However the underlying schematic is an additional schematic sheet, independent of the sheet containing the design for the original block. This means that a) multiple copies generate a proliferation of sheets and, more of an issue b) edits to the original block schematic do not propagate to the duplicated underlying schematics. Other schematic design applications often have a "block" function, and in the context of duplicates they normally work by inserting multiple instances of a single sub-schematic (with some scheme for indexing component and net names). This means that the user only has one underlying schematic and edits to that sheet are inherently propagated to all instances (duplicates). Could this facility be provided?
PaulR
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| 3 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Iain Wilkie |
Posted - 01 Sep 2012 : 17:49:57
Quite honestly. I can't see as useful. I have never used it or found the need for it, just another level of complication in my opinion.
Iain |
| Scazon |
Posted - 01 Sep 2012 : 14:07:41
I've just returned to actively using EPC after 3 years in the wilderness (better known as Network Rail), and I'm just starting to use hierarchical blocks for the first time. It seems unbelievably clunky; it would appear to be the easiest thing in the world to apply changes (e.g. pin names) made at one level to the corresponding item in another level- after all, the "check block" function looks at both levels, but leaves you to do all the changes it has logged- by hand, and sneers in the background when you get it wrong.
The design I'm doing involves a lot of repetition, but it appears easier and quicker to cut-and-paste between schematics than to use the block function.
So if you're going to wait until hierarchy is "widely used" before you fix it, you may as well cut it out now and save yourselves and us the bother. As for only "higher end" packages using hierarchy, that's just nonsense. Most of them have it except at the "toy" end of the market.
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| DavidM |
Posted - 16 Aug 2010 : 17:34:40
Firstly, you should be able to edit the Block Port names in the Properties dialog for the Block. In the 'grid' that lists the block ports, the Name cells are editable.
On your second point, you are correct that some packages - mostly those towards the more expensive end of the price range - do implement what is known as 'true instance hierarchy'. As you have ascertained, Easy-PC does not do this, so there is indeed some element of repeated work needed if you need to modify the contents of all channels in your design. This is something we can perhaps look into in the future depending on how widely used Hierarchy in Easy-PC becomes.
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