Recently I was asked to do a component for a set of DIMM edge fingers. Not a problem, but since the fingers are intimately tied to the standard board outline of the DIMM, I went ahead and placed the board outline as part of the pattern. This worked well and the user was pleased. The only drawback, at the time, was that I couldn't also place the board outline dimensions into the component as well. All was fine until he tried to autoroute the board with SPECCTRA. It wouldn't do it at all, SPECCTRA couldn't see the board outline. After he subselected the elements of the board outline from the component, copied and replaced them on the board layer, SPECCTRA was fine. Now that I think about it, envisioning how the .pcb file would appear (in ascii anyways), the board outline in a component would appear at a different hierarchical level that one placed separately. Its apparent that the PCAD-to-SPECCTRA translator doesn't look inside component levels for board outlines. That's a pity, it worked so well to create it that way for the DIMM and its edge fingers. I suppose I could ask that the translator be changed to 'see' board outlines in components, but this is such an obscure issue that I doubt that would ever happen. So, I just wanted to pass that along: Board outlines that are entered as a part of a component, won't be seen as a valid board outline by SPECCTRA. Gary Crowell Micron Technology ____________________________________________________________ You are subscribed to the PEDA discussion forum
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