Feature request for physical design reuse capability in the board editor

On 4/14/2016 6:36 AM, rachaelp wrote:

Hi All,

 

I mentioned this briefly as part of another thread a little while back

but I don't think it's been raised as an actual feature request in its

own right before.

 

So when using PADS there is a really useful feature called physical

design reuse. What it allows you to do is as follows:

 

1) Take a design which has a lot of repeated circuitry within the design

(whether within a schematic sheet or across hierarchy, it's not fussy!)

2) Place and route a single "channel" of the identical circuit blocks.

3) Create a script which encapsulates the details of the placement and

routing.

4) Apply that script to subsequent channels to place and route the

remaining identical blocks.

There is kind of a way to do this already using File > Import > EAGLE

drawing. The methodology would go something like this:

1. Draw one channel as a consistent brd/schematic pair.

2. Open the schematic in which you want to reuse this design.

3. Go File > Import > EAGLE Drawing.

4. Select the schematic to import (the board will come with it).

5. A dialog will pop up showing any naming conflicts with existing

signals. Make sure everything looks good then click OK.

6. You will now see the channel imported as additional schematic sheets

and the layout is perfectly preserved on the board, along with consistency.

It's not the same as what you have suggested, but it's a means to

achieve a similar effect. It's also completely isolated from hierarchy.

 

This would be really useful of many different things, here are just a

few examples:

 

1) Audio input / output circuitry of multi-channel audio gear, e.g. Pro

audio gear I have worked on has up to 16 identical input and output

channels

2) Multi channel motor drive circuits, e.g. 3D Printer or CNC machine

control circuits.

3) DDR memory channel placement and breakout, e.g. TI's DM8168 has two

DDR3 controllers, copying one placement and the majority of routing to

the other would be a huge time saver.

4) DC-DC converters, e.g. I often find I have several identical circuits

for different voltages on large boards.

 

There are a few examples on youtube of how this is implemented in PADS

which are worth taking a look at which I will link below. When I

mentioned this on another thread previously it was suggested that this

would best be done as part of the hierarchy feature but I actually think

it would be best to be kept absolutely separate from that as it's not

dependant on hierarchy at all. Linking this feature to using hierarchy

would severely limit it's potential usefulness I think.

Within the framework of hierarchy, the mod-duplicate ULP can almost

achieve the script like behaviour, however it has issues with global nets.

hth,

Jorge Garcia

On 4/14/2016 6:36 AM, rachaelp wrote:

Hi All,

 

I mentioned this briefly as part of another thread a little while back

but I don't think it's been raised as an actual feature request in its

own right before.

 

So when using PADS there is a really useful feature called physical

design reuse. What it allows you to do is as follows:

 

1) Take a design which has a lot of repeated circuitry within the design

(whether within a schematic sheet or across hierarchy, it's not fussy!)

2) Place and route a single "channel" of the identical circuit blocks.

3) Create a script which encapsulates the details of the placement and

routing.

4) Apply that script to subsequent channels to place and route the

remaining identical blocks.

There is kind of a way to do this already using File > Import > EAGLE

drawing. The methodology would go something like this:

1. Draw one channel as a consistent brd/schematic pair.

2. Open the schematic in which you want to reuse this design.

3. Go File > Import > EAGLE Drawing.

4. Select the schematic to import (the board will come with it).

5. A dialog will pop up showing any naming conflicts with existing

signals. Make sure everything looks good then click OK.

6. You will now see the channel imported as additional schematic sheets

and the layout is perfectly preserved on the board, along with consistency.

It's not the same as what you have suggested, but it's a means to

achieve a similar effect. It's also completely isolated from hierarchy.

 

This would be really useful of many different things, here are just a

few examples:

 

1) Audio input / output circuitry of multi-channel audio gear, e.g. Pro

audio gear I have worked on has up to 16 identical input and output

channels

2) Multi channel motor drive circuits, e.g. 3D Printer or CNC machine

control circuits.

3) DDR memory channel placement and breakout, e.g. TI's DM8168 has two

DDR3 controllers, copying one placement and the majority of routing to

the other would be a huge time saver.

4) DC-DC converters, e.g. I often find I have several identical circuits

for different voltages on large boards.

 

There are a few examples on youtube of how this is implemented in PADS

which are worth taking a look at which I will link below. When I

mentioned this on another thread previously it was suggested that this

would best be done as part of the hierarchy feature but I actually think

it would be best to be kept absolutely separate from that as it's not

dependant on hierarchy at all. Linking this feature to using hierarchy

would severely limit it's potential usefulness I think.

Within the framework of hierarchy, the mod-duplicate ULP can almost

achieve the script like behaviour, however it has issues with global nets.

hth,

Jorge Garcia

Hi Jorge,

Thanks for your reply, and I agree your suggestions do enable a similar effect to an extent but there are limitations. For example if we take the the import EAGLE drawing way, I can do this but if I have a small piece of circuitry which I can normally fit say 8 channels per page, to have the schematics with 8/16/32 channels I would have to import this 8/16/32 times and then go about restructuring the schematics to get everything where I need it to be. It's definitely a time saver on the layout but a lot of it I think will be mitigated by the extra work of re-structuring the schematics. It's something that is likely of benefit where there are a smaller number of reasonably sized identical blocks that need reusing though so this is definitely going to be helpful.

I actually think I have an idea how it may be done using ULP, I have the concept in my head of how I might do it but I need to do a bit more research first and then I will have a go and see if I can get a proof of concept working. I'm currently in the middle of finishing off the ULP which links my back end components database to EAGLE for better component management, once I have finished that off I will take a look at this.

Best Regards,

Rachael