Hi, I wondered if anyone knows if there are PCB packages which support hierarchical hardware design. For example, everytime I do an FPGA design, I use my favourite switching PSU circuit. The routing has been honed to perfection! Sadly, I can't easily just cut and paste this into my new design, as the Mental, sorry Mentor, PowerPCB tools complain about reference designations, net names and the like being different. What I want is to be able to instantiate my pre-placed and routed PSU into each new design. So, does anyone know of a tool which allows this? Our PowerPCB package sort of supports macro reuse, but in a horrible circuitous fashion. Cheers, Syms.
Hierarchical PCB design.
Nov 24, 2004
6 Replies
I believe Altium (DXP2004) does this - you can certainly do heirarchical schematic design, defining module-level ports and so on, then drop it into a top-level design. I'm pretty sure it handles pre placed/routed PCB "macros" as well - I'm sure an Altium sales person would be happy to tell you all about it! :)
Rgds
John
Yep - that's the one. DXP is the suite of tools that includes Protel, and various CAM products and so on.
Cheers,
John
You need the Physical Design reuse (PDR) option for PowerPCB to do this in the most seamless way. However, you should also be able to also do a cut/paste, and then use Syncronise with Schematic, to re-align the Net names/RefDes on any copied block ? PADS will alert to deltas/changes, but does not stop you proceeding. The syncronise option allows the deltas to be cleaned up, but you do also need to watch mounting holed/fidicuals etc.
-jg
The Pulsonix software I use lets you do this:
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Download the demo and try it. It will import PADS schematics and PCBs. If you want to try it properly you can request a 30 day license.
Leon
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