Display netname on silkscreen

Is it possible to have the schematic’s netname show up on the board layout’s silkscreen ?

I am displaying netnames on the schematic using a Label so that I can see what a connector’s pin’s function is for example (“sensor 1, sensor2, etc” for example).

I would also like to have those netnames show up (automatically ?) on the board’s layout’s silkscreen so I know visually on the board what each pin’s function is for identification.

I know I could use text to place the netname as text onto the silkscreen but I have many such labels and if there were an automatic way to have them appear it would save a lot of typing…

0 rachaelp over 6 years ago

You could write a ULP to do this but it wouldn't be 100% automatic although it would reduce typing. Here is one called netToText.ulp I knocked up in 5 minutes to do this in a fairly basic way. You currently still need to select tNames or bNames to put the text on the silk screen layer. This will run from the right click context menu or from the command line.

#usage "en: Adds a text label to the selected net\n"
           "run netToText install - to install to the boards context menu"

if (argv[1] == "install") {
    exit("edit .brd; set context wire 'Add Net Label...' 'run netToText';");
} else {

    string cmd="";
    string name="";

    if (board) {
        board(B) {
            B.signals(SIG) {
                if (ingroup(SIG)) {
                    name = SIG.name;
                }
            }
        }
    }
    sprintf(cmd, "TEXT %s", name);
    exit(cmd);
}

This can probably be improved, currently it only does one net if you have a group of many. I think this may be a limitation of running the TEXT command from the command line as if you terminate it with a ; you can't actually place the text so it does nothing.... You could however get it to automatically switch to a certain layer and change the font style, size etc to suit your needs.

Anyway, I hope this helps.

Best Regards,

Rachael

EDIT: I had a typo in my original script so the context menu integration appeared not to work. Now it does so the post is updated to reflect.
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