Silly resistor values

And who is it I note hasn't posted any more "cheap" circuits ?:-)

...Jim Thompson

I believe it comes from the Bhudist's vision of the Earth being supported on the back of a turtle. Then, what is the turtle standing on? Why another turtle! It's turtles all the way down.

Power supplies normally get connected on globals.

Sure, that's fine as long as you have the entry tool running. How does it work on dead trees? Certainly IBM mainframe schematics were hierarchical (mostly) but that was unwieldy 30 years ago, so they went to flow charts, then about 15-20 years ago, VHDL. I'm wondering about bringing up the boards and debugging. I don't generally have OrCad pulled up on a tube in the lab. Manufacturing certainly doesn't.

I'm used to an entire cabinet of schematics. ;-)

Not so much "the hard way" (the world isn't going to end), but let's make a deal... "You want to save money and I want to know how much of

It would be nice if the schematic print outs of a hierachical schematic would include, e.g., a page number so that you could very quickly traverse it yourself (at least so long as you keep the sheets sorted -- don't drop'em!).

That being said, all of the PCs we have in our manufacturing area have a PADS and ORCAD viewers on them (I find it incredible that Mentor *charges actual money* for a PADS viewer that *does less than just using PADS in "demo mode" with no license whatever*). The later isn't used very often at this point, but the former is -- trying to find, e.g., D135 on a board with many hundreds of discretes takes too long by had.

---Joel

One other thing: Some schematic capture programs (Viewlogic and Pulsonix that I know of, but there are probably others -- not ORCAD, of course, it hasn't had any significant improvements in many years) will generate "smart" PDFs for you that let you click around through the hierarchy using regular old Acrobat Reader (or better yet, Foxit Reader) -- it'll also add component attributes to the schematic components that can show up as mouse tips (stuff like manufacurer, part #, etc.). Handy if you need to send off schematics to a contract manufacturer or customer.

---Joel

That's why I print 'B' size. At least I can put it in a notebook.

We don't, but it may be a necessary evil. I prefer paper, myself. I print all documentation (printing Altera Cyclone-III device handbook right now). I like to make notes and dog-ear the important parts. Paper is far easier for me to read, as well.

Not likely to do either (CM or customer), but that sounds like a good reason to dump OrCad! Now to start spreading the nasty rumors...

ORCAD is stuck in a time warp... it's had relatively few bugs fixed nor features added in more than 5 years now. It is of course usable, but I'm fairly certain that Cadence is getting very few new orders for ORCAD -- it's people on maintenance (or I suppose purchasing more licenses if they already have some) that keeps it alive. I believe they've actually dropped the price in the past few years, recognizing that it's slowly losing value as it largely lies around on life support.

I find that -- using mostly the default symbol libraries that come with ORCAD -- C-sized sheets printed out on 11x17 paper looks quite readable. D-sized sheets are pretty borderline, although if you have a 13x19 ("super B") printer it's still tolerable if necessary.

Yeah, I do too, at least if I'm going to be referring to it for any significant period of time... but all the PCs having the ability to pull up schematics and layouts is still quite valuable when you need to just briefly reference some old project and has tossed out or don't know where the paper copies are (or know that the design has been ECOed since you last saw it and you had no reason to print the latest and greatest version).

I print most documentation "two up" (two pages stuck on each side of a sheet of paper), after eliminating most of the margin (it's amazing how much margin some data sheets have...).

I wonder how well a tablet PC would work for some of this... if only the screen resolutions were better... you really want at least 150+ DPI to be "nicely" readable...

---Joel

My schematic sheets are defined as 25.5" x 16.5", printed on 'B' size. ;-) Our printer is an HP DesignJet 500 - 24" roll. I print with a 1" offset and slice off the right 6" side manually.

The only duplex printer around is my P2015DN at home. :-( I just bought another toner cartridge for it after printing the Altera documentation. :-((

Too fragile, IMO. It would be better to have 24" monitors bolted everywhere in sight. Hell, it would be nice to _have_ 24" monitors. I have two 19" LCDs and the other engineer has two 19" CRTs (though he does use 1600x1200). Times are pretty tight right now, but getting better (it's the busy season).

Well, it is only maintained by a few guys in India, who have to handle the entire Orcad/PSpice line. It is what is known as a Cash Cow - it generated cash flow without significant investment...

Charlie

But anyone who uses Crapture deserves it ;-)

...Jim Thompson

Sounds pretty good.

Have the recpetionist manually duplex for you? :-)

I take that as a sad commentary on the state of business in the U.S. these days -- many companies are so inefficient that they calculate their re-training/data re-entry costs (if they were to switch from ORCAD) to be huge, while simultaneously being so short-term oriented they don't see any of the long-term gain doing so could provide. ...grumble...

"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Indeed, but for many engineers the choice comes down to, "these are the tools we have, if you don't like them, you know where the door is."

Just wait for ObamaCAD... it'll promise to address any and all schematic capture needs while outlawing any private tools. :-)

And any new designs.

The only good things I can say about it are more or less the same reasons I use WinBlows. It works, sorta and there is a lot of industry support. OTOH, the main reason I use it is that it's what the boss bought.

largely

Deserves to get paid for using it. ;-)

Pretty much. I actually bought 9.1 (in '98, IIRC).

Hope and ECO?

price

largely

I have a copy, only because some clients actually request their documentation in Crapture format. Fortunately I can convert to Crapture directly from PSpice (nee Microsim) Schematics... one of the most user-friendly tools ever devised... and it does hierarchical _gloriously_!

...Jim Thompson