What's Good About DEHDL Alignment? You’ve got it in the SPB16.3 Release!

Schematic construction requires a lot of effort in placing components, wires and text/notes in such a way that the end schematic looks neatly organized. Aligning and distributing objects on a schematic can be time-consuming if it has to be done manually.

The Alignment and Distribution functionality provided in the SPB16.3 Allegro Design Entry HDL (DEHDL) product helps in speeding up the design entry process by easing the task of placing these objects in a more systematic manner and achieve a better looking schematic with little manual effort.

The Align and Distribution functionality works on a selected set of objects which include:

• Components
• Wire segments
• Text
  • Properties
  • Notes

You can align and distribute objects, either vertically or horizontally. The Align function aligns a selected set of objects with respect to a common axis. The Distribute function equally spaces a group of objects according to the type of distribution - horizontal or vertical.

Note: During the align and distribution operations, connectivity is always maintained. If the components are already connected, the wires are stretched to maintain the connectivity. There is no loss in connectivity, shorting, or overlapping of objects after the Align or Distribution operations.


For more details, read on ....

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To align or distribute a set of objects, you need to select similar types of objects and then run the Align or Distribute commands. Use one of the following ways to run the commands -

Toolbar:

Pop Up Menu:

Aligning Objects

The Alignment functionality aligns objects with respect to a common axis. You first need to select the objects to be aligned to activate the icons on the toolbar or the Align menu options. Depending on the alignment option you choose, a common axis is calculated. You can align schematic objects in the following manner:

• Vertically - Left / Center & Right
• Horizontally - Top / Center & Bottom

For example, consider the following snapshots of how the objects look like before and after aligning:

Distributing Objects

The Distribution functionality distributes objects with equal amount of space between them. You first need to select the objects to be distributed to activate the icons on the toolbar or the Distribute menu options. The distribution command adds up the empty space between the objects and then moves the objects so that the space between all the objects is the same.

You can distribute schematic objects in the following manner:

• Vertically
• Horizontally

The following of pictures explain how the spacing between the objects will function.


 

As always - I welcome your feedback and suggestions on how you're using this new DEHDL capability.

Jerry "GenPart" Grzenia