Unique IDs

Question

Today I'm creating a bed-of-nails fixture for testing a panel of PCBs, and so I have several repeating circuits. I've put a single circuit on a schematic sheet and then made several copies of it, added the files to the project and linked them all up with one 'master' schematic that includes each of the sheet symbols. Then (it seemed) all I'd need to do is change the component designators on each sheet (if .SchDoc files were in a human-readable format I'd have done this using awk). The project compiles without any errors, however the Unique IDs of the components are duplicated. I can go through each sheet and manually reset them, although I'd rather not. It raises a few questions:

- should the compilation fail if there are duplicate IDs

- how can I find out whether there are duplicate IDs

- is there a quick way to reset all of the IDs

I'm guessing that if I can copied and pasted the contents of the sheets within CS then this would have been taken care of, but because I copied the files manually the IDs weren't updated.

Cheers,

Frog

e14softwareuk · Accepted Answer

You should have a warning message about the unique IDs that will be visible in the View | Messages window. It is possible to change the warning into an error by altering the severity level under Project | Document Options : Error Reporting.

If you circuits really are exact duplicates then CS does support repeated schematic blocks to save you having to copy and paste lots of times.

Not sure there is a specific command available to reset the Unique IDs but performing a cut and paste of a circuit will reset the IDs.

If you have already started the PCB then make sure your designators are up to date and once you have reset the IDs run Tools | Component Links from your PCB to make sure the schematic and PCB match.

Unique IDs

Top Replies