Assembly Variant Part Attribute

Hi Jim,

I've just tested this out in 7.2.0 and it is exactly as you describe in 6.6

I'm afraid.

It does seem quite a limitation of variants to only allow the value and

technology to be changed within a variant and not any other attributes and

the way of doing that seems a little clunky too. I guess it's fine for

people who aren't trying to put in place a system that properly manages

BOM's and need more than just value and technology.

I personally would have expected to be able to crate a new variant, switch

to it and then edit all properties and attributes of a component in the

usual way. Switching between any variants would then restore all component

properties and attributes to the selected variant. Sadly it doesn't work

this way. Maybe there is a good reason they've implemented it this way but

I'm not sure what as I only recently discovered the variants feature so

haven't used it too much yet, only for specifying populated or

non-populated parts.

Rachael

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Thanks Rachael.   Your expectations are exactly what I as hoping to be able

to do!   Bummer that its not improved in 7.x.

Regards,

Jim

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On 12/17/2015 10:29 AM, James Littlefield wrote:

Thanks Rachael.   Your expectations are exactly what I as hoping to be able

to do!   Bummer that its not improved in 7.x.

 

Regards,

Jim

 

 

Hi Jim,

Rachael is correct. Unfortunately at the moment only technology, value,

placement are adjustable.

I have submitted an enhancement request to the Devs.

Best Regards,

Jorge Garcia

On 17.12.2015 23:17, Jorge Garcia wrote:

 

I have submitted an enhancement request to the Devs.

Thanks, I also appreciate that.

Markus

James Littlefield wrote:

I'm using Eagle 6.6 Pro and have been assigning part attributes (MF,

MPN, OC_VENDOR) to my schematics and use the bom ulp to generate

BOMs.    While there is much to wish for in terms of the mechanics of

initially assigning attributes the process works pretty well.    I now

have a project where I have some components that have alternate values

so I created an assembly variant and changed the value of the component

in the new assembly variant.    Everything works as expected EXCEPT that

the manufacturer part number attribute for the part is the same even

though its value changes from 1M to 10M between variants.    Is there a

way to have separate sets of attributes in each assembly variant?

if you assign the the value via technology, you can also assign the

related manufacturer/vendor information as properties of that

technology.

Instead of changing value & manufacturer/vendor data separately, just

change the technology and you are done.

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Lorenz

Lorenz wrote on Fri, 18 December 2015 14:12

if you assign the the value via technology, you can also assign the

related manufacturer/vendor information as properties of that

technology.

 

Instead of changing value & manufacturer/vendor data separately, just

change the technology and you are done.

--

 

Lorenz

Yes good point, that does work but I found it could be quite unwieldy to

deal with setting values this way if for example you want to do this for

say the entire E24 range of resistance values (let alone E48/E96/E192) in

packages from 0201 through to 1812 and it became a total mess for

capacitors. That's a heck of a lot of work to do to create that library and

to select the value you want requires searching and/or scrolling so takes

longer. But the plus side is, if you know your library is right then you

know that when you select a value in this way, the corresponding attributes

for internal / manufacture part numbers etc will get updated correctly

which ensures things stay consistent.

I've not got a good solution for managing keeping additional properties

updated other than the above approach using technologies. Other tools I

have used have been able to hook into an external database via ODBC to

provide a searchable library of parts and the attributes get populated from

the database when selected but this is part of a totally different

discussion about Eagle libraries and library management in general rather

than this thread relating specifically to variants.

I think the enhancements suggested to the way variants work are still valid

despite there being this possibility of a work around and they would make

variants more intuitive to use and more flexible. I guess we'll have to

wait and see what happens now!

Rachael

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Jorge,

  Thanks for making this issue visible to the developers.   I would like to

also raise a couple points which would make the attribute handling much

more convenient.    In preparing for BOM generation design link will create

some standard attributes for all the parts (MF, MPN, OC_NEWARK,

OC_FARNELL).    IF designlink finds an appropriate part and confirmed by

the user,  all these attributes get filled in automatically AND design link

knows how to apply the same attribute selections to all the same/similar

parts in the design (ie all the 1K 0805 resistors with matching package). 

   If designlink cannot produce a suitable choice and you "skip" the part

then the attributes have to be filled in manually to get a complete BOM. 

As an example,  I have a unusual size/power rating resistor and I use a lot

of them,  designlink can't find the right part, so I have to manually fill

in all the attributes.   Whats really time consuming is that even if I have

10 resistors, all with the footprint,  value,  I have to manually (re)enter

the MF, MPN, OC_XXXX) for EACH one.   It would be a huge time saver if the

attribute dialog was enhanced to allow one to define/edit the attributes

for a common group of parts.    Designlink is able to do this internally so

it seems like the same functionality could be exposed in the Attribute

dialog.

Thanks for listening!

Jim

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Web access to CadSoft support forums at www.eaglecentral.ca.  Where the CadSoft EAGLE community meets.

    If designlink cannot produce a suitable choice and you "skip" the part

then the attributes have to be filled in manually to get a complete BOM.

As an example,  I have a unusual size/power rating resistor and I use a lot

of them,  designlink can't find the right part, so I have to manually fill

in all the attributes.   Whats really time consuming is that even if I have

10 resistors, all with the footprint,  value,  I have to manually (re)enter

the MF, MPN, OC_XXXX) for EACH one.   It would be a huge time saver if the

attribute dialog was enhanced to allow one to define/edit the attributes

for a common group of parts.    Designlink is able to do this internally so

it seems like the same functionality could be exposed in the Attribute

dialog.

 

Hi Jim,

I hope you're doing well. Have you tried the attrib-add.ulp that is up

on our website? Make sure you get the latest version it allows you to

assign attributes based on a group.

You would just define a group that contains the parts you want to assign

the attributes to and run the ULP.

hth,

Jorge Garcia