Change Connect Pin to Mechanical

Just change your find filter so Text is checked, delete the pin number text and you are good to go. Of course this can only be done inside of the Allegro symbol (.dra) and not the layout (.brd).

Hope this helps,
Mike Catrambone
UTStarcom, Inc.

Hey there,
What about the other way around? Changing a mechanical pin to a connect pin?

Jackie

It's better to replace the mechanical pin to a connect pin inside symble (.dra) using "Add pin" option.

Jackie,

There is a way to convert a mechanical pin to a connect pin but it should only be used when you have multiple(many) pins to convert and it would take too long to replace them manually using "Add Pin".

All you need to do is to create a sub-drawing (File > Export > Sub-Drawing) of just the pins using x 0 0 as your origin point then manually update the sub-drawing file (.clp) file by globally replacing the following string: (add 99 as your pin number)

-->From
_clpInitPinText(_clp_pin_text "" 0:0)

-->To
_clpInitPinText(_clp_pin_text "99" 0:0)

Once you make these change you can deleted the existing mechanical pins and import the modified sub-drawing (File > Import > Sub-Drawing) into your symbol using x 0 0 as your insertion point. Now the pins will have an pin number associated to them which makes them a connect pin and using Edit > Text you can change the pin number place holder 99 to the correct pin number.
Doing it this way you don't have to stress on placing the new connect pins at the exact same location as the existing mechanical pins and all you need to do is update the attached pin numbers.

Like I said before if you only have a couple mechanical pins to convert to connect pins then it would be fast to just replace them using "Add Pin" as Shiva indicated but if you have lots of mechanical pins to convert it is just faster going the sub-drawing Export/Import route.

Hope this helps,
Mike Catrambone
UTStarcom, Inc.

Mike,

Thanks for the replies. Would have hoped that there would be better support within Allegro for converting between Mechanical and Connect pins. I guess not something most do too often if libraries were created from scratch in Allegro, but for those of us transitioning and converting libraries from other tools such as OrCad Layout it would really help.