Re: gEDA-user: Back Annotation

[Peter Clifton <pcjc2@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, 2008-11-09 at 21:30 -0500, gene wrote:
> > Done right (I don't know the algorithm), this tends to place
> > components with close refdes numbers near each other.  That way
> > it's easier to find a particular component on the board because
> > components with close refdeses are physically close to each other, so
> > if you're looking for C117 and you can find C115, then you know you're
> > close.
> > 
> In past jobs, I too have used this feature.
> 
> Great feature to have, but I bet getting it to work within a hierarchy 
> isn't pretty :)

I ended up cheating when I needed to do this for some big hierarchical
designs. (The board assembler wanted re-ordered refdes on the boards.)

I used pcb's renumber feature (which writes out a file of the things it
renumbered).

I then hacked gnetlist to read said file, and introduced a mapping step.
gnetlist output then matches what the board expects. Downside.. this
isn't annotated onto the schematics yet. It would be almost impossible,
without flattening the schematics, or copy-pasting a new schematic for
each instance.

For debugging, I just refer to my "logic-board.map" file, and use it as
a key to get between the schematics refdes and the board refdes.

Another way I cut this (needed when I wanted to un-renumber the board
afterwards) was teaching PCB to read a similar mapping file.

As the PCB file is loaded off disk, the elements were renamed according
to the mapping. (Saving saves the renamed elements).

If anyone is interested in either of these hack-arounds, I'll post the
two patches here. Neither was particularly large, and they have both got
me out of a holes with my design.

-- 
Peter Clifton

Electrical Engineering Division,
Engineering Department,
University of Cambridge,
9, JJ Thomson Avenue,
Cambridge
CB3 0FA

Tel: +44 (0)7729 980173 - (No signal in the lab!)



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