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Brandon
United Kingdom
15 Posts |
 Posted - 22 Apr 2015 : 10:35:48
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HI,
I am in the process of designing a rack mount (eurocard ) ATE system. A few of the PCB's will have identical sections, Control Processor/Control IO/analog outputs etc. etc.
I am wondering if there is a way that I can reuse parts of the boards I have already laid out, (purely to save time). But I'm thinking about part renumbering issues etc.
Has anyone ever done this and has a suggested way of going about it. Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I should go about this?
Thanks
Brandon |
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Iain Wilkie
United Kingdom
1015 Posts |
Posted - 22 Apr 2015 : 13:35:57
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Just create a new design and cut and paste the sections you need into it.
Alternatively just start with a copy of an existing design and edit it accordingly.
Iain |
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DavidM
United Kingdom
458 Posts |
Posted - 22 Apr 2015 : 13:42:37
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You can use Apply Layout Pattern (Tools menu in PCB) to help with this. Put the first section you want to replicate into the schematic, connect it all up as required, then add all of that section to a group. Translate to PCB. Select everything in the first group, lay out the components and route the tracks. Now choose Apply Layout Pattern from the menu, select that first group to take the pattern from, and one of the other groups to apply it to. It will do a 'best fit' against the components in the original group, and arrange those components and tracks in the same pattern as the original. As long as your groups are consistent, this is a whole lot easier than doing it all by hand.
Alternatively you can try doing the copy-and-paste in both Schematic and PCB to replicate the sections, but there is no guarantee that the component and net names are going to match up between the two designs, so you may then find that Integrity Check wants to juggle things around.
David.
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Brandon
United Kingdom
15 Posts |
Posted - 22 Apr 2015 : 13:43:07
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Hi Iain,
Yes the 'start with an existing design and edit' was they way I thought I should go.
I wondered if I was opening a can of worms, with an existing PCB, a new schematic (with new ref numbers) forwarding the new bits into the old pcb etc etc.
I was interested if someone could advise against this, unforeseen issues down the road etc.
I've already had library issues, where the schematic and PCB are out of sync (god knows why) and EPC insisted on a 'back annotate'.
I'm not that experienced in EPC so I was looking for an experienced view of my issue.
I'll go the way you suggest.
Thank you
Brandon |
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Brandon
United Kingdom
15 Posts |
Posted - 22 Apr 2015 : 13:49:40
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Hi David,
Yes the second method you suggest and the caveat, was the situation I could forsee and was looking for the chorus of 'don't do that !'
The first suggestion 'layout pattern' sounds like the sought of short cut I was looking for. I will look into it.
Thank you
Brandon |
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Topic |
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Creating Similar PCB Layouts