Re: gEDA-user: newbie help: gschem to pcb

[Richard Urwin <richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wednesday 14 Sep 2005 19:44, Richard Urwin wrote:
> I have a schematic, but I cannot create a pcb layout from it; the
> layout appears to be blank and the netlist has strange undefined
> components in it. - "U? ?"
>
> What am I doing wrong? TIA.

On Wednesday 14 Sep 2005 19:56, Steve Meier wrote:
> Try the following steps....

Thanks, but I really wanted to generate the pcb file from the gschem 
source.

> hit in order the keys E then N.
But I'd have been searching for that combination for ages, thanks.

On Wednesday 14 Sep 2005 20:21, Steve Meier wrote:
> On the U? ?   thing....
>
> In your schematic the ground symbol has no net information. try using
> the ground from the power library. gnd-1.sym

I swear they _were_ gnd-1.sym. But deleting them all and re-adding them 
was part of the solution. Plainly there was no GND net, so it must have 
got lost somewhere. Probably my bumbling.

On Wednesday 14 Sep 2005 20:02, John Luciani wrote:
> The values of your component attributes seem to have a newline
> character at the end. If you remove these characters the "?" mark
> characters will disappear.
>
> Right-click on a component and edit the attribute value to remove the
> newline.

I never did this - it didn't seem to be necessary.

> You should also check your footprint attribute values.
> For example CONN1 footprint attribute value has whitespace in the
> name. Is this correct?

Another step on the road to enlightenment. Not the footprint, which 
should have whitespace, but the value, which should not. Having added 
in the GND net by replacing all gnd-1 symbols, gnetlist started to 
complain about this. Removing the whitespace in a couple of components 
had the pcb file being generated nicely.

> You may want to start with a very simple schematic two or three parts
> and run though the process of generating the PCB. After that works
> add more parts or copy portions of your existing design into the
> simple design.

Good advice.

Thanks for the help.

-- 
Richard Urwin