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Limit specific BRD files to only using certain library paths?

bengelJF

I'm repackaging an existing design from an outside group and have received a schematic and footprint/padstack files.

By pure coincidence, some of the footprint names in the schematic matched up with our internal libraries and were placeable in the board file straightaway. However, I don't want this file to be able to access our internal libraries; I want it to only pull from a particular project-specific library.

I hop between projects pretty regularly, so I don't want to delete everything from my padpath and psmpath to limit my entire installation to the project-specific library. If I do this, I'd have to change them every time I hop to a different board, which could be multiple times a day.

Is there a way to tell a board file to only use specific libraries/file paths?

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  • +1

    The solution we came up with was to use a relative path in the same directory as the .BRD file, e.g. "./Library", placed at the top of the padpath and psmpath lists. OrCAD goes through these lists from top to bottom when searching for footprints and padstacks, so by placing this at the top we tell it to look in this Library folder first.

    If we're working on a design from an external source, their footprints and padstacks go in this folder and are the first thing OrCAD encounters; if we're working on an internal project, we simply don't create that folder and it falls back on our regular libraries which are further down the list.

    The downside here is that you can still end up with internal footprints on an external project if it finds a matching item on an internal library, so we need to watch for that. The upside is that we don't need to create any scripts or customized files as long as we follow this setup.

Reply
  • +1

    The solution we came up with was to use a relative path in the same directory as the .BRD file, e.g. "./Library", placed at the top of the padpath and psmpath lists. OrCAD goes through these lists from top to bottom when searching for footprints and padstacks, so by placing this at the top we tell it to look in this Library folder first.

    If we're working on a design from an external source, their footprints and padstacks go in this folder and are the first thing OrCAD encounters; if we're working on an internal project, we simply don't create that folder and it falls back on our regular libraries which are further down the list.

    The downside here is that you can still end up with internal footprints on an external project if it finds a matching item on an internal library, so we need to watch for that. The upside is that we don't need to create any scripts or customized files as long as we follow this setup.

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