Altium Designer PCB

[googlinggoogler@hotmail.com]

Hi,

Im trying to make a PCB with Altium Designer 6.4, I have entered my
schematice and when I come to start making the PCB in the PCB layout
bit not all of my components import and I get purple outlined boxes
telling me the schematice sheet but not showing the component or the
nets

Any ideas on what im doing wrong here? I think there defined as rooms,
but I dont want to use rooms, how can I turn this off?

Thanks

Greg

 

[maxfoo@punkass.com]

Hi,

Im trying to make a PCB with Altium Designer 6.4, I have entered my
schematice and when I come to start making the PCB in the PCB layout
bit not all of my components import and I get purple outlined boxes
telling me the schematice sheet but not showing the component or the
nets

Any ideas on what im doing wrong here? I think there defined as rooms,
but I dont want to use rooms, how can I turn this off?

Thanks

Greg

Rooms? Holy crap! -- How big is pcb going to be? take a look at this
free one http://www.pcb123.com/

 

[Nico Coesel]

Rooms? Holy crap! -- How big is pcb going to be? take a look at this
free one http://www.pcb123.com/

My idea exactly. The Altium Design suite (formerly Protel) is the
worst EDA suite I ever worked with! Totally non intuitive. The only
positive thing about it is that it accepts the old DOS Protel keyboard
short-cuts.

 

[RHRRC]

My idea exactly. The Altium Design suite (formerly Protel) is the
worst EDA suite I ever worked with! Totally non intuitive. The only
positive thing about it is that it accepts the old DOS Protel keyboard
short-cuts.

--
Reply to nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
Bedrijven en winkels vindt U opwww.adresboekje.nl- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

You are showing your inexperience here.
Cadstar is miles worse than Altium - but in its defense at least it is
not marketed at electronic people so it doesn't matter how cr*p it is
to use.

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

You are showing your inexperience here.
Cadstar is miles worse than Altium - but in its defense at least it is
not marketed at electronic people so it doesn't matter how cr*p it is
to use.

Really? Cadstar was sold to Microdyne for schematics & PC layout.
They had to change to another package, but found a consultant to
maintain older drawings.


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

 

[RHRRC]

Really? Cadstar was sold to Microdyne for schematics & PC layout.
They had to change to another package, but found a consultant to
maintain older drawings.

--

Yep - its the sort of thing you get when 'technical management' select
the best tools for the job for the engineers.

 

[Winfield Hill]

My idea exactly. The Altium Design suite (formerly Protel) is the
worst EDA suite I ever worked with! Totally non intuitive. The only
positive thing about it is that it accepts the old DOS Protel
keyboard short-cuts.

Isn't any PCB-design package likely to be non-intuitive to someone
who has grown up on another package? The Protel engineering crowd
loves the program, and claims it's far better than the competition.

Altium purchased P-CAD (originally Tango) some years ago, and has
advanced it over the years with most of the same features being
added to Designer, SFAICT.

For example, recently they added differential-pair routing, which
simultaneously routes two wires together at a specified spacing.
I imagine this feature is generally used in a manual-routing mode,
perhaps one of the advanced, assisted manual-routing modes, for
enhanced PCB performance and appearance.

But I digress.

Last year Altium began migrating the entire P-CAD community to
Designer, so the user-base for Designer should grow substantially.

I'm a P-CAD user and like it, so I'm not looking forward to the
change. But I've been told by engineers I respect that I'll not
regret it. I'll soon know. It was a free upgrade from Altium.

 

[nospam]

Hi,

Im trying to make a PCB with Altium Designer 6.4, I have entered my
schematice and when I come to start making the PCB in the PCB layout
bit not all of my components import and I get purple outlined boxes
telling me the schematice sheet but not showing the component or the
nets

Any ideas on what im doing wrong here? I think there defined as rooms,
but I dont want to use rooms, how can I turn this off?

When you updated the PCB from the schematic you were presented a list of
every change to be made which included the creation of the default one per
schematic sheet rooms.

You had the option of validating all of these changes and could have chosen
not to apply any of them including creation of the default rooms.

Rooms are just a device for containing a group of components which you may
want to manipulate as a group or apply design rules to as a group.

The most likely reason you don't have all components on the PCB is that you
didn't specify footprints in the schematic which the program could find in
available libraries. Missing nets can be the result of specifying
footprints which don't have pins matching the schematic symbol. You would
have been notified of these errors when you applied the changes to the PCB
and before if you bothered to validate them first.

--

 

[Nico Coesel]

Isn't any PCB-design package likely to be non-intuitive to someone
who has grown up on another package? The Protel engineering crowd
loves the program, and claims it's far better than the competition.

I suppose they are wrong then I've made 2 circuit diagrams / PCBs
with Altium and it is cumbersome to use in every way. I really needed
the manual to figure out how to create a new component and footprint
and there is tons of things you really need to know which aren't
described in the manual. I never had that problem with other EDA
packages (and other software). Recent packages like Layo1 PCB and
Orcad Capture / PCB are much easier to use and are mostly self
explaining.

Do I need to go into simple default settings like choosing track
widths, via sizes? All kludgy. Included libraries.... mostly obsolete
parts. And how about changing attributes of a whole bunch of vias
later on? First you'll need to become an expert on database queries
Altium style so you can build a query and then change the attributes.
The whole package just doesn't feel like it was written to create
circuits in an easy way.

They probably wrote a spec and send it to India without thinking about
someone actually has to use the software. Sure it does everything you
want -in the end- but it just isn't efficient and it takes a lot of
time to learn where every option has been hidden.

The old Dos Protel PCB just asked to change all similar items like the
item you just changed. Click 'yes' and you where done.

 

[Winfield Hill]

Nico Coesel wrote:

I can't speak to all your comments, except to say I've never
seen a PCB package that can be used fully without a manual,
online or otherwise, and some detailed knowledge.

... And how about changing attributes of a whole bunch of vias
later on? First you'll need to become an expert on database queries
Altium style so you can build a query and then change the attributes.

It's actually a matter of a just few quick clicks.

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

Yep - its the sort of thing you get when 'technical management' select
the best tools for the job for the engineers.

The character hired to replace the retiring engineering manager
wanted everything converted to Visio. He wasn't there, very long.
Finally, they moved a real engineer into the job, but let him continue
to do systems design work.


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

 

[Nico Coesel]

Nico Coesel wrote:

I can't speak to all your comments, except to say I've never
seen a PCB package that can be used fully without a manual,
online or otherwise, and some detailed knowledge.


It's actually a matter of a just few quick clicks.

In P-cad it probably is (as in most PCB packages), but beware of
Altium PCB...

 

[nospam]

In P-cad it probably is (as in most PCB packages), but beware of
Altium PCB...

It is a few quick clicks. Global editing in Altium Designer is more capable
and easier and faster to use than in previous Protel PCB packages.
--