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Part Developer Symbol Editor will not display grid.

admin

Two main questions in this post:

How do I get the symbol grid to display in Part Developer?

How do I attach my own custom PCB footprint to schematic symbol? 

 

I'm using Cadence 15.2 and I am in the Allegro PCB Design HDL 220 : Part Developer.  All the tutorials and PDF's I've been reading show that when I right click on "Symbol" and select "New", the Symbol Editor should also show a grid of how the symbol will appear.  I do not have this grid.  The "Hide Grid" box is unchecked and I have tried grabbing the right edge of the "Symbol Pins" spreadsheet and dragging it over.  The cursor changes as if the grid window has just been slid over (like a column resize indication in an Excel spreadsheet).  So I grab it and try to pull the border back to the left, but when I release it, nothing changes.  How do I get this grid to display? 

My overall goal here is to create a simple PCB.

The parts I am using do not fall into a category of "typical" everyday items, so I need to create schematic symbols, padstacks, and a PCB pattern for each item.  The padstacks were the easiest.  The PCB footprint development is a little more involved but I believe I got it.  However the schematic symbol generation is proving to be a bear, especially when I want to attach a footprint.  It seems I am limited to JEDEC footprints and cannot choose my own custom one.  How can I change this?

My PCB layout experience comes from an entirely different methodology as I learned on Accel EDA in the late 90's.  The company I was with had a maintenance program so I was on that software up through its name change back to PCAD.  My last involvement with that was PCAD 2001.  So Cadence being a much more involved and thorough program has a much more complex learning curve for me.  I'm not going to be doing anything complex or high speed, just fairly basic and simple.

 

Thank you for any help,

 Eric.

  • oldmouldy

    I am not sure exactly what the setup was with 15.2 but, for current versions, the ability to edit graphics and footprints is only available with the "Expert" level Librarian license. For other tiers, the Tools>{tool} menu option needs to be used to open the editors.

    If you have designed the footprint and cannot associate it with the schematic symbol, check that the path to your footprints has be correctly configured from "Setup" for the project, try the Tools tab, PCB Editor button, check that the "design paths" entries are set for the PADPATH and PSMPATH, you may also want to checkout the "algrotutorial.pdf", module 1 covers Getting started with PCB Editor and discusses the expected project directory for a DE HDL <> PCB Editor project.

  • admin

    Okay, I "think" I've figured out some of these things.  My environment variables were set correctly, but the program still would "see" the footprint.  I had to type in the footprint within parenthesis in the "Alt Footprint" box to get my footprint into the Part Developer.  I then switched to the Board Design flow and selected Design Entry.  I wish there was a snap to grid feature for the cursor.  It took around 15 tries to figure out how to use the Symbol Outline and Move Pin buttons to get something useable that would put my pins on grid.  I routed two pins together and saved the file so I could go into layout to see if I got things right.  So now my problem is, how do I import schematic information in PCB to make sure I built things correctly?  In PCAD it was a simple matter of exporting a netlist from the schematic program and then importing the netlist into the PCB program.  It automatically brought in all the parts and connected the pads.  I then just had to place things where I wanted them and route the ratsnest.  How do I do this in Cadence?

     

    Thank you,

     Eric.

  • steve

    Eric

    In HDL to create a netlist you use File - Export Physical. You can also update your PCB files here but I would recommend doing that at the PCB Stage. Once in Allegro you use File - Import - Logic. Ensure you select HDL as the import tool and browse to the packaged directory (this is where the netlist files from HDL are placed.

    If your using Project Manager (which is very likely) you can also use the Design Sync button (on the project manager flow).

    There are tutorials and help menus on all this stuff inside the tools. If you hover over the Export Physcial button in HDL and press F1 it will take you to the correct help page. This works for all commands.

    Regards

    Steve

  • admin

    Everyone,

    Thank you for all your help.  I was finally able to sit down and go through some program basics with one of the guys that's been using it for a while.  So most questions have been answered.  Now I'm off to research the SKILL forums as our allegro.ilint file keeps giving parser errors when the PCB Layout is invoked.

     One again, thank you!

     Eric.

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