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  3. Pads are rotated 90° compared to .dra file

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Pads are rotated 90° compared to .dra file

SOT23
SOT23 over 2 years ago

Hello !

I am facing a very strange problem : some footprints have their pads rotated 90° compared to what I did in the dra file :

This is supposed to be a 1210 chip capacitor

I have had this problem in two different occasions : 

- While quickplacing components on a new design, the pads where rotated 90°.

- While refreshing pads on a design that was already routed. I had to modify a padstack and refreshed all the pads. Big mistake... Now I have all my 1210 capacitor pads rotated.

Why is this happening ? This is very weird and very unwanted... Does anyone have a solution ?

I am using OrCAD Pro, 17.4 S029

Thanks

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  • oldmouldy
    0 oldmouldy over 2 years ago

    There is nothing like enough detail to resolve this but it's important to note that PCB Editor will be reading the PAD, Padstack, files directly from the PADPATH and NOT any Padstacks cached in the DRA file(s). This sounds like the Padstacks have been defined locally in the DRA file(s) and the actual PAD files being used have a different rotation specified for the Padstack. Another possibility is that there are multiple definitions of the Padstacks stored in the PADPATH and the order is getting a Padstack with the "incorrect" rotation selected. Try the Symbol Library Path Report and the Padstack Usage Report to get the file locations.

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  • SOT23
    0 SOT23 over 2 years ago in reply to oldmouldy

    Sorry for the late reply !
    To try to get the origin of the problem, I re-created the .dra and .pad, and the problem was still there. It seems that Allegro does not "remember" the pad orientation set in the .dra. What I mean is that if the padstack has 90° rotation (using move, rotate) in the .dra, when put in the design, that rotation doesn't get transfered. I think this is the case because this only happens with pads that are rotated. If a pad has a 0° orientation in the .dra, then there is no problem.

    Does it mean that I have to create all pads with correct orientation in the padstack ? It means that I can't use a padstack that is for instance a 1mmx2mm rectangle as a 2mmx1mm rectangle. I have to create 2 different padstacks...

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  • redwire
    0 redwire over 2 years ago in reply to SOT23

    What is probably happening is that the DRA has a specific pad rotation on it.  That pad rotation has obviously changed its definition through its lifetime.  When Allegro imports the symbol, it also imports the pad separately with the applied rotation on it.

    That is when you will see this issue.  You need to go back to the DRA file and re-import the pads, and assuming the pads live in one place, you should see the issue in the symbol.

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  • redwire
    0 redwire over 2 years ago in reply to SOT23

    What is probably happening is that the DRA has a specific pad rotation on it.  That pad rotation has obviously changed its definition through its lifetime.  When Allegro imports the symbol, it also imports the pad separately with the applied rotation on it.

    That is when you will see this issue.  You need to go back to the DRA file and re-import the pads, and assuming the pads live in one place, you should see the issue in the symbol.

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