Hi Olag,
So I think the primary source of grouping information will be through
integration with DRC constraints. For example, for a wide bus like you
describe, one could have a constraint such as:
(rule "AddressBus"
(constraint length (min 39mm) (max 40mm) (opt 39.5mm))
(condition "A.NetClass == 'DDR_Addr' && A.fromTo('IC1-*','IC2-*' )")
The Net Inspector would group all nets matching this constraint. Likewise
for skew constraints (although length + skew constraints matching the same
criteria I'll aim to display on the same line). There's probably some
complexity here with nested constraints (e.g. a net which matches a bulk
bus constraint like that above, but which also contains differential pair
constraints within), but we'll solve those when we get to them.
I also I intend to leave the option to group by a freetext field searching
on netclass and net names, sort of as exists currently, and the option to
just group by netclass, for cases where constraints have not been defined.
For signal constraints, it'll be very similar - but signals are currently
not really defined at all, so I won't say much more other than I'd expect
signals to group by constraints and / or signal name patterns too.
Hope that all makes sense?
Yours,
James.
On Fri, 1 Mar 2024 at 09:09, Oleg Endo <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi James,
>
> > Yep that functionality is being used as the basis for a new dockable
> version, with improved searching / grouping.
>
> Great! I'm curious to see what you can come up with. In particular w.r.t.
> the searching/filtering/grouping, especially the grouping.
>
> The grouping functions that I've put in there are a bit difficult to grasp.
> What I needed was effective end-to-end length tuning of 16+ bit bus across
> different networks and through some damper resistors. I hope you can come
> up
> with a more user friendly UI for things like that :)
>
> Best regards,
> Oleg Endo
>
> On Fri, 2024-03-01 at 07:53 +0000, 'James Jackson' via KiCad Developers
> wrote:
> > Hi Oleg - Yep that functionality is being used as the basis for a new
> dockable version, with improved searching / grouping.
> >
> > Glen - Likewise very comfortable with how Altium handles signals, but
> need to be careful to do things from a 'solving problems' perspective,
> rather than a 'like this product does'. It's all good information to feed
> the design process though.
> >
> > Yours,
> > James.
> >
> > On Fri, 1 Mar 2024 at 02:50, Oleg Endo <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > On Mon, 2024-02-26 at 19:03 +0000, 'James Jackson' via KiCad Developers
> > > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > 2. A 'tuning inspector' (dockable widget, like the properties
> inspector) which shows in real-time the state of any length and / or skew
> constraints against matching or chosen nets. This would be particularly
> useful for tuning net skews on large collections of nets. For example, I
> currently run a hacky python script which queries the board layout every
> few seconds to calculate the length of defined nets and displays this in
> the terminal. Issues to consider:
> > > > a. As far as I can see, the algorithm to match PCB geometry
> items to a constraint rule is weaky quadratic (O(Num_Rules *
> Num_PCB_Geometry_Items)). Running this in real-time would potentially be a
> performance killer, so need to consider some way to choose a set of
> constraints / matching nets to watch. Would also need to be updated on DRC
> rule changes, and need to monitor items being added to / removed from the
> board (do hooks exist for this, or do we need to regularly recompute?). If
> watching for board changes is a pain, thoughts include running any
> processing in a background thread and re-compute every (for example) 1s.
> > > >
> > >
> > > You might want to have a look at the net inspector dialog. I needed a
> > > similar functionality a while go to get a design job done, so I
> rewrote the
> > > net inspector dialog to be non-modal and updating the trace lengths in
> real-
> > > time as they are being placed (after dragging, not during dragging).
> > > Perhaps it could give you some ideas.
> > >
> > > Best regards,
> > > Oleg Endo
> > >
> > >
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