On Wed, 2011-01-26 at 13:33 -0500, rickman wrote:
I guess I am missing something significant with this. Why wouldn't the
inductor just be a component on the schematic and a component in layout
just like any other inductor? The only difference is that the footprint
defined for the component would be the copper that makes up the
antenna. It would have a pad on each end for the signal connection. Is
arbitrary copper in a footprint not supported?
Not currently supported. PCB would also need to treat that copper
differently in its own connectivity scanning code, otherwise it would
merrily extract the whole DC-connected netlist (shorting either side of
the inductor).
As to DRC, I would think design of an antenna would be a pretty complex
thing to analyze automatically. A 3D field solver comes to mind. Is
any of that capability currently interfaced with these tools?
Perhaps I was going a bit far to suggest full DRC for the actual antenna
design. What I really meant was not loosing information for net
connectivity checking leading up the antenna.