Baxandall Class-D Oscillator paper accessible on my web-site

That's really, really painful! Sheesh!

...and to think that we have debates over whether it's better to draw, e.g., hex inverters as one big package or six discrete ones! (My answer is, "do both -- there are good reasons for wanting one or the other depending on the particular design, it's not like we're going to run out of disk space storing library files, you know?" -- But there are those who believe that, no, there should be One True Symbol for any given part and really dislike the thought...)

---Joel

In PSpice Schematics I have _692_ custom-made symbols ;-)

Not all are components, however. Some are special test function gimmicks, such as the LoopGain function shown on my website. ...Jim Thompson

Did you contact Jim Williams and send him a link?

Count me on your side. However, it would be nice to put them all in the same library "symbol" and allow the designer to select the one for that situation. It would also be nice to be able to let the tools (or using back annotation) fill in the pin numbers. There are things, that at least OrCAD, doesn't have to allow this.

Our layout guy (also the librarian) made a cap symbol for every P/N in our system. It works out OK, but it puts a separate part in the cache for each part used. The jury is still out whether I like the approach. It's not going to work for resistors, I don't think (just too many).

I completely agree; ORCAD is rather primitive in how it handles parts libraries. E.g., in Pulsonix, there are footprint libraries, symbol libraries, and parts libraries (all separate file types) -- one part can be joined up to any number of symbols and/or footprints.

Can you use (library part) aliases for that? We were doing that for awhile, although then when we started rolling out a new ERP system it was unclear whether or not the CIS portion or ORCAD would integrate cleaner with aliased parts, so we stopped (...and we've been busy enough that the original question hasn't been resolved yet).

---Joel

hes

of

He's not known for reading his e-mail, and it's not something I'd phone him about - he's not going to rewrite AN-45 once again just to include a reference to Peter Baxandall's paper.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Symbols are people viewing, netlists and BOM's can't be anything else you desire. ...Jim Thompson

Gack! Stumble-bum as I wake up :-(

... netlists and BOM's CAN be in any format you desire.

You just need to understand the capabilities of your tools. ...Jim Thompson

Aliases are too dumb, to do much at all, from what I can tell. It's just another name for a part. The problem is pulling in all the part properties from the release system (Agile). I want to try CIS, but we only have one node-locked license that the layout guy uses (useful, huh?).

We've been busy too (I've already done a half dozen boards this year and probably have at least that many in queue), so he stopped at the caps (and there a lot of new ones to go in there). We have to do something about ICs, though. As discussed above, I like several versions of a part (a necessity with FPGAs) and there is no good way to keep them organized.