Re: gEDA-user: Building subcircuits in gschem and pcb possible?

[Larry Doolittle <ldoolitt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Charles -

On Tue, Feb 07, 2006 at 01:54:04PM -0500, Charles Lepple wrote:
> On 2/7/06, Larry Doolittle <ldoolitt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > I end up post-processing the xcircuit netlist to get
> > reasonable component names, since they otherwise come out with
> > the hierarchy prefixed.
> 
> The "hierarchical prefix" notion makes more sense once you see it, but
> for those who haven't, it's something like this.
> 
> Let's say you want two H-bridges, H1 and H2, with transistors Q1-Q4.
> The "upper-left" transistor in each H-bridge, for instance, might be
> "H1/Q1" in H1, and "H2/Q1" in H2.

Oh, it makes sense all right.  And doing anything else would
either lose information or require another level of programming
and configuration.  That's what I accomplish in my post-processing,
where I turn the logical "H1/Q1" and "H2/Q1" into a layout-friendly
"Q101" and "Q201".  When you get dozens of components in a channel,
and 4 to 12 channels on a board, systematic and concise naming of
parts becomes mandatory (IMHO).

I just wrestled with OrCad on this matter.  I won, with the help of
an OrCad guru, but it wasn't easy.  The relatively primitive software
architecture of PCB (pcb.sourceforge.net) actually makes this goal
easier to reach.

      - Larry