Getting part on grid

Some more details:

I set up rooms and did a quick place by room. None of the parts have been placed on my 25 mil grid. If I go into placement edit mode and select a part, then go up to the tool bar and select Place>Manually, the part will snap to grid and I can then place it on grid.

How can I make this happen automatically?

(Running the latest update)

 Tom

Response from Cadence:

The Quickplace utility just throws the parts into the rooms on the board in no particular placement order and does not place them on a specified grid. With the move command selecting the parts individually will place the part’s origin on grid. However, this is not the case if you move a group of parts.

The software does not have a utilities that either places them all or moves them all and automatically places them all on grid. The software expects that as you determine the exact location you want to position the part you will use the Place > manually command to select and place the part or use the Edit > Move command to specify its move a part to the exact placement point.

Maybe you could consider using Auto Placement (Place > Autoplace) to place the components based on the auto-placement grid. 

Here are the quick steps:

1) Setup > Areas > Package Keepin - Define shape where components can be placed, required by the next step.

2) Place > Top Grids - Enter the X and Y Grid increment and indicate the origin point of the grid lines.
    (This will add a hatch grid on Board Geometry / Place_Grid_Top used when auto placing components)

3) Edit > Property - Add the PLACE_TAG component property to all the parts you wish to auto place, could select them all.

4) Place > Autoplace > Design  - This will place all the components with the PLACE_TAG property within the board outline on the placement grid defined in Step 2.
   (Note: Use Place > Autoplace > Parameters to change the component origin point; Body center, Symbol Origin or Pin 1)
 
That's it.  Play with it a little bit. Sort of a weird use of the functionality but it may give you what you need.

The one major difference compared to Quick Place is Auto Place places the components on the board using the hatch grid defined on Board Geometry / Place_Grid_Top and Place Grid_Bottom subclasses.

Hope this helps,
Mike Catrambone

Thanks Mike. I just tried that on a smaller job I'm starting and it works well.

I have found that eventhough quick place does not put the parts on any specific grid, once I select each part for the detailed placement, they will snap to the specified grid.

Tom

Hi Tom,

No problem, I am glad I could help. In some cases I wish Quick Place would be driven by a grid as well, or at least have an option to snap to a grid.

You could also use Autoplace to place by room.  If you already have a ROOM property on your components then you would need to define ROOM shapes using Setup > Areas > Room Outlines with a ROOM Name matching each of your different ROOM component properties.  In this case you don't want to add a PLACE_TAG property to your components because its placement will be driven by the ROOM property attached to the components.

It is a little time consuming because you Auto place one ROOM at a time using Place > Autoplace > Room then select the ROOM for auto placement.  If you have a lot of ROOMS to place you could generate a small script file to run Autoplace by Room (example shows Auto Placement of ROOM MEMORY and PROCESSOR)

   place area room ; fillin "MEMORY"
   place area room ; fillin "PROCESSOR"

Take care,
Mike