Global padstack change?

Hello TH,

I am a former layout user too, Allegro is powerful but getting up to speed on it is some pain. So how to achieve what you want
to do, give this a try.

Looking at your footprint on the screen try the following.

Select View > Window > and choose Options so you can display the Active Class you are working with.

Next go to the tool bar and choose ''General Edit" "We will work in General Edit Mode"

Ok select the padstacks you want to replace by holding down the shift key and left clicking on each pad until they are all
highlighted. Trick is you have to select what you want to do first.

With the pads highlighted go to the tool bar and select Tools > Padstack and choose Replace. Notice that the Options menu on
the right of the screen will have changed to display Padstack Parameters. : )

Click on one of the Pads with your mouse, the pad that you clicked on should display as the old padstack name in the options
menu.

Next click New for a new padstack that you want to attach to all of your highlighed Pads on that footprint. The padstack window
"Select a Padstack will Display" , Choose the padstack you want to use.

Note in the 16.5 PCB editor I was unable to see a quick preview of any padstacks. I was able to see a Text view of what the padstack
was. "Strange" eh

At this point you will see the old pad and the new pad displayed in the options menu, Click Replace to replace the old pads
in your footprint with the new pad.

Did that work for you ?

I 100% agree that changing the pads on a pin in layout is painless and easy to do. Things just make sense. Library management
is alot easier too.

If you want to see what a Rat Race Allegro can get into try this as a test. Open a footprint that contains 4 pads. I opened
dip4_3.dra. Now invoke the padstack editor with tools > Padstack > Replace.

Hold down the shift key and click 4 pads. After about two pads you will notice in the Options menu on the right of the screen
that what you have done is just select the old pad and the new pad and the system should beep indicating that you have selected
all that you can select. Now if you hit reset on the options pain at this point the program will more than likely crash and burn.

But aside from that, the thing is that one would think when I am in a particular menu such as replacing padstacks I would be able
to select the pads I want and replace what I want from in that menu, but it does not work that way in Allegro. Little things like this
will drive someone trying to learn the tool insane. Stuff dont make any sense when you compair it to competing PCB tools or even
the older Layout tool. There is better flexibility in the older layout tool IMHO, but Allegro has a much faster display and it can do
some very neat things with Shapes and it's manual routing works well. For high speed design it is also very good.

Scott.

Scott,

 Thanks for the response. I'll give it a try this morning.

Tom

Scott,

I tried what you suggested verbatium and it did not work. Eventhough I had pins 2 thru 14 selected, it changed all 14 pins to the new padstack. I noticed that there is a "Pin #" box so I tried just changing one pin to a new padstack and it worked fine. So next logical thought was that I could provide a list of pins either in the format of 2-14, or 2 - 14, or comma delimited 2,3,4....... With each one the program would hang the give me a nice message apologizing for the need to close.

I did go back and start all over several times. Made sure I was in general edit and had the class selected as pin. still got the same result. I suppoose it is easier to change pin 1 to some obscure pad, then change the padstack for 2 thru 14 to the one I want, then go back and change the padstack for pin 1 back to the original. Or just start all over with a new part and place the pads correctly the first time around. This version seems to be very unforgiving if you make any mistakes and need to change something.

For now I'll continue to run 16.2. After dabbling with 16.5 off and on for a few months now, I'm seriously contemplating looking at offerings from other manufacturers. I think they designed in way too much versitility into this release that it makes it very difficult to learn. There has to be more intuitive programs out there..........

Tom 

Tom I went back over what I sent you and at this end I can change any padstack on the fly using my method above. Sorry to hear it is not working for you. Could you possibly try again using one of the cadence supplied .dra symbols.

It is very strange that it is wanting to change every padstack, it should only change the padstacks you select before you invoke the replace padstack dialog.

The change padstack utility is not very robust as you got it to crash too, sad eh.

When you open up a symbol typically it will load with it's own colors, do you happen to
use a parameters file so you can use your own custom colors and design parameters ? or do you just go with the editor defaults ?

Thanks Scott

Scott,

I hope to get some time with this today. I asked the EMA tech guys about the padstack change and they sent me a tech note on how to do it. I read through it and it appears to have approx 11 key clicks to to what used to take two or three.

I would like to change the colors to the ones I'm used to and I think I may know how to do that.

Man, I sure miss the backspace command to clear the screen...............

Tom